


^'/Oi 





SEC ^NH nOPY, 
16^9. 







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A GLANCE 



AT 



CURRENT HISTORY 



BY 



JOHN CUSSONS, 

Past-Grand Commander of the Confederate Veterans of Vii^nia; 
Ex-Chairman of History Committee, &c. 



GLEN ALLEN, VA. 

CUSSONS, MAY & COMPANY, Inc. 

1899. 



\-% 






35504 



Copyright, 1899, 
By John Cussons. 



All rights reserved. 



f\N0 00t»\f:B «sc£ivea 









TO THE MEMORY OF 

MY COMRADES 

WHO FELL IN DEFENCE 

OF THEIR 

INHERITED LIBERTIES 

THESE PAGES ARE 

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 



Publishers' Note. 



These pages give the candid utterances of a Confed- 
erate soldier who strenously opposed disunion ; not as 
doubting the rightfulness of secession, but as gravely 
questioning its expediency. 

During the period of agitation which preceded the 
war he believed that the revolutionary spirit which 
then infected the North was but a passing phase of 
fanaticism, and that that fanaticism was destined to 
perish under the rebuke of all good citizens who, he 
believed, would surely unite in upholding the Constitu- 
tion and the laws. But when Lincoln's call for an 
army of invasion found so swift response among the 
multitude, it became evident that Northern conservatism 
had been over-estimated, and that the advocates of 
secession had really read the portents aright. 

The author has always held that the full measure 
of America's greatness could be achieved only beneath 
a single flag, but he is equally firm in the conviction 
that a true spirit of national unity will never be 



6 Publishers' Note. 

attained by a distortion of historic truths. He believes 
that the highest and noblest aspirations of a people 
will take their impress from that which is worthiest in 
their traditions, and that if they are so unfortunate as 
to feel no just pride in their past they may well despair 
of finding any rational hope for their future. In short, 
he insists that there can be no evil so deep and abid- 
ing as that which must befall a people who have been 
taught to hold the memory of their ancestors in derision 
and contempt. Believing thus, his creed is: "Absolute 
fairness in the historic treatment of the past, and then 
unity of effort for the upbuilding of a nation such as 
the world has not seen." 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

I. A Glance at Current History, - - - 11 

II. On History as Taught in Our Schools, - 77 

III. On "Teachable" History, - - - - 89 

IV. On the Outworn Theory of Government by 

Consent, ....-- US 

V. On Granting Forgiveness Before it is Asked, 131 

VI. On the " Treachery" of the American Indian, 141 



A GLANCE AT CURRENT HISTORY. 



A GLANC^E AT CURRENT HISTORY. 



On tlie general merits, or rather demerits^ 
of The South it is quite evident that the 
outside world has made up its mind. 

The "accepted fable" or "distillation of 
rumors" which we call historj^, has fully 
crystallized, and there seems but little ground 
for supposing, during the present generation, 
that there will be any revision of the judg- 
ment already pronounced. 

For two-and-thirty years our Northern 
friends have deprecated any allusion on our 
part to the causes or character of the war, 
assuring us that every impulse of manhood 



12 A Glance at Current History. 

and every throb of patriotism demanded 
that we should bury the past, with all its 
illusive hopes and unavailing griefs, and 
bend our undivided energies to the upbuild- 
ing of a common country. And that is pre- 
cisely the thing which we liave been doing. 

Meantime, during those same two and 
thirt}'' years, those Northern friends of ours 
have been diligent in a systematic distortion 
of the leading facts of American history — 
inventing, suppressing, perverting, without 
scruple or sliame — until our Southland 
stands to-day pilloried to the scorn of all 
the world and bearing on her front the 
brand of every infamy. 

This has been accomplished not alone 
nor chiefly by historic narrative or formal 
record, but rather by tiie persistent use, at 
all times and on all occasions, of every 
form and mode of unfriendly expression — 
in pulpit and on platform, at iyceum and 
on the hustings, by picture and story, by 



A Glance at Current History. 13 

essay and song, by sedate disquisition and 
airy romance, and in a general way by the 
unwearied false coloring of all past and 
current events. 

Step by step tlie malignant work has 
gone on. Each point yielded by Confed- 
erate silence has been swiftly seized as a 
new vantage ground for Federal aggression. 
The forbearance of the South has been 
misconstrued. In her solicitude for the 
honor of the American name, she has re- 
frained from either vindicating herself or 
characterizing the conduct of her con- 
querors. Like the true mother at the judg- 
ment seat of the Great King she has accepted 
injustice rather than bring under condem- 
nation the child of her own being.* And 
she has her reward. 

For thus it has come to pass that in the 
popular mind her very name has been made 



*The domain of Virginia originally extended from Carolina to 
Canada, and from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific. 



14 A GL.VNCE AT Current History. 

an embodiment of folly, a symbol of mean- 
ness, a proverb of utter and incurable in- 
efficiency. The economist with a principle 
to illustrate, the moralist full of his Neme- 
sian philosophy, the dramatist in quest of 
poetic justice — in short every craftsman of 
tongue or pen with a moral to point or a 
tale to adorn turns instinctively to this 
mythical, this fiction-created South, and 
finds the thing he seeks. 

The world has decided against us, and 
there remains to us now but a single hope — 
the hope of winning and holding something 
better than a dishonored place in the hearts 
of our own children. And even this hope, 
modest yet none the less precious, is fading 
away as the days go b3^ A wise and philo- 
sophical historian has justly said that "a 
people which takes no pride in the noble 
•Achievements of a remote ancestry will never 
achieve anything worthy to be remembered 
by remote descendants." Truer words were 



A Glance at Current History. 15 

never spoken. And yet our grandchildren, 
trained in the public schools, often mingle 
with their affection an indefinable pity, a 
pathetic sorrow — solacing us with their 
caresses while vainly striving to forget "our 
crimes." A bright Httle girl climbs into 
the old veteran's lap, and hugging him hard 
and kissing his gray hairs, exclaims: "I 
don't care, grandpa, if you were an old 
rebel! I love you! I love you!" 

But there is to be an end of this. The 
friends of the Grand Army of the Republic 
have spoken. And ever since the war ended, 
that army has been a potential force. Noth- 
ing more is to be said in palliation of the 
rebels or the rebellion — no word of com- 
fort, no plea of sympathy. Confederates are 
always to be described as "insurrectionists" 
who sought to destroy the Government. 
"Treason is to be made odious." The story 
of the war is to be told from the victor's 
standpoint alone. The existing histories are 



16 A Glance at Cukrent History. 

to be expurgated. Every tribute to South- 
ern heroism is to be blotted out, and the 
sum total of martial glory is to be trans- 
ferred to the Grand Army of the Republic. 
This plan has doubtless many advantages. 
It seems to settle hard questions so easily. 
Military fame is illusive, and if it comes 
not by gage of battle, there is really noth- 
ing more natural than to invoke it by other 
means. And our Northern friends have 
chosen wisely. If the three tailors of Tooley 
street could achieve undying renown by 
putting forth a mere preamble, what may 
not the friends of the Grand Army accom- 
plish by writing down a solid column of 
resolutions? They have labored long and 
arduously, but have at last hit the mark. 
We admire their perseverance, their re- 
sourcefulness, but most of all we felicitate 
them on their success in giving a new 
meaning to the old aphorism that "the pen 
is mightier than the sword." 



A Glance at Current History. 17 

The United States History which to day 
enjoys the widest circulation and the highest 
fame is the recent work of GrOLDWiN Smith, 
Doctor of Canon Law and Professor of 
the Humanities, Toronto, Canada. 

The learned author has gathered his in- 
spiration, and what he calls his facts, from 
many sources. He enumerates by title no 
less than twenty-two authorities, and adds 
that a complete list would be out of propor- 
tion to the size of the book itself. And 
yet there is absolutely nothing to indicate 
that he has troubled himself with more 
than one side of his subject. He makes no 
allusion of any kind to any writer who has 
extended his investigations in the faintest 
degree beyond the beaten paths of North- 
ern historical orthodoxy. There is not a 
fragment of reference to Sage's colossal 
work, or the scholarly monograph of Curry, 
or the vivid picturings of Maury, or the com- 
prehensive exposition of Stephens, or the 



18 A Glance at Current History. 

philosophical review of Ropes, or indeed 
any citation whatever which can inspire a 
reasonable hope of the slightest tendency 
towards impartial treatment. 

Mr. Gold win Smith, however, is something 
more than a mere Doctor of Canon Law 
and Professor of the Humanities. He takes 
high rank among the masters of political 
economy, and surely not without abundant 
reason, for the skill with which he has 
adapted his wares to his market is beyond 
all praise. 

His book is published both at New York 
and London, and is intended, he informs 
us, "for English rather than American 
readers;" nevertheless, it has become amaz- 
ingly popular with our brethren throughout 
the North. 

The general plan of his work is an un- 
sparing villification of the South. This wins 
for him Northern plaudits. Amid the glee- 
ful tumult he weaves in his sneers and 



A Glance at Current History. 19 

gibes on America at large, and thus opens 
a second market for his books among his 
own class of delighted Britishers. 

South Carolina, he says, got her start by- 
combining "buccaneering with slave own- 
ing," and utilized her ports by making them 
a shelter for pirates and corsairs, " such as 
Captain Kidd and Blackbeard." 

Georgia he deals with more leniently. 
Her people were not distinctly criminal, 
but just languidly and lazily vicious — shift- 
less, drunken and beggarly. She became 
"the refuge of the pauper and the bank- 
rupt." Her first settlers were "good-for- 
nothings who had failed in trade " — a " shift- 
less and laz3^ set," who "called for rum;" 
but later on "better elements came in, 
Highlanders, Moravians, and some of the 
persecuted Protestants of Salzburg." 

But Virginia seems to be his especial 
aversion. From her very beginning it has 
been her misfortune to awaken within him 



20 A Glance at Current History. 

the most distressing emotions. He says 
she was not started right; that her first 
settlers were an unpromising lot — lackeys, 
beggars, broken-down gentlemen, tapsters 
out of a job. And things went from bad 
to worse. "To the crew of vagabonds were 
afterwards added jail-birds." * * "Con- 
victs were offered their choice between the 
gallows and Virginia," and some were wise 
enough to choose the gallows. They were 
not nice. Their aims were low, their mo- 
tives sordid, "their very place of settlement 
has long been a desolation, and only frag- 
ments of ruin mark its site." 

Such is the forbidding background of Mr. 
Gold win Smith's historical picture when he 
begins to light it up with the luminous 
glories of the Plymouth settlement. The 
Pilgrims, he assures us, were an altogether 
different kind of people. There was noth- 
ing sordid about them, nothing grovelling, 
nothing base. Their pure hearts were too 



A Glance at Cxjrrent History. 21 

full of simple faith and holy zeal to afford 
room for corrupting influences or worldly 
desires. "Some sustaining motive higher 
than gain was necessary to give them vic- 
tory in their death struggle with nature, 
to enable them to make a new home for 
themselves in the wilderness, and to found 
a nation." 

It was not only during the early period 
of colonization that the New Englanders 
were superior to the Virginians. The dis- 
tinction seems to have widened as time 
went on. "Though no longer gold seekers, 
the men of Virginia were not such colonists 
as the Puritans. They were more akin in 
character to the Spaniard on the south of 
them, who made the Indian work for him, 
than to the New Englander, who worked 
for himself." * * "To work for them 
they had from the first a number of in- 
dentured servants, or bondsmen, jail-birds, 
many of them; some kidnapped by press 



22 A Glance at Cuekent History. 

gangs in the streets of London, all of de- 
praved character." * * " Afterwards came 
in ever-increasing volume African slavery, 
the destined bane of Virginia and her ulti- 
mate ruin. Thus were formed the three 
main orders of Virginia society: the planter 
oligarchy, the 'mean white trash,' and the 
negro slaves." And so for two hundred 
years she plodded on, unredeemed, her "poor 
whites" being hopelessly given over to "a 
barbarous and debased existence." 

As were the people so were their leaders. 
"A chief fomenter of the quarrel" [with 
England] "was Patrick Henry, a man who 
had tried many ways of earning a liveli- 
hood, and had failed in all." * * * "A 
brankrupt at twenty-three, he lounged in 
thriftless idleness, till he found that tho he 
could not live by industry he could live by 
his eloquent tongue." 

This is the Goldwin Smith idea incarnate. 
It is the Yankee idea, the Puritan idea. 



A Glance at Cureent History. 23 

The logical New England brain would 
formulate and demonstrate the proposition 

thus: 

1. Patrick Henry, furnished with a good 
stock of groceries, failed at twenty-three. 

2. A Puritan, even of the tenth magni- 
tude, under hke circumstances, would not 
fail at twenty-three. 

Ergo: A tenth-rate Puritan is the supe- 
rior of Patrick Henry. 

Such are the limitations of the New Eng- 
land mind. Under the law of its very 
being it is fettered by its single standard 
of worth, and is therefore quaHfied to pass 
judgment only on those subjects which by 
it are measurable or deemed worthy of 
measurement. Its supreme test of merit is 
accumulation; the capacity to amass. 

As a student of natural history our 
author has doubtless been taught that the 
eagle is without a rival in range of vision 
or strength of wing. And yet he should 



24 A Glance at Current History. 

know that the busy magpie in half an hour 
will spy out and stow away more bits of 
glass and shining beads and glittering 
trumpery of every sort than the Bird of 
Jove will be likely to get together in a 
score of years. Mr. Goldwin Smith does 
not seem to make proper allowance for 
differences in instinct. 

A generous foe, a member of the aristo- 
cratic order which Henry so fierce^ as- 
sailed, sees in the young Virginian something 
other than a "shiftless idler" and "loung- 
ing bankrupt." The poet-peer felicitously 
presents him to all nations and to all ages 
as "the forest-born Demosthenes" — the 
standard-bearer of a brave people, outraged 
by unendurable wrongs, yet resolute to trans- 
mit to their posterity the liberties which 
were their birthright. 

With that prescience which is the heaven- 
bestowed gift of genius the young patriot 
clearly discerned the signs of the times. He 



A Glance at Current History. 25 

foresaw the real nature of that tempest 
which was fast gathering throughout the 
civilized globe. He knew that tho the 
world for two centuries had been awakening 
from its lethargy of a thousand years, yet 
the time was only then ripening for man- 
kind's deliverance. Instead of minding his 
shop, as Mr. Goldwin Smith would have 
done; instead of consecrating himself heart 
and soul to movements in the tallow trade 
or fluctuations in the calico market, he gave 
his brilliant intellect free range through the 
whole cycle of human knowledge, and 
summed up the situation of the hour with 
a precision and comprehensiveness which is 
still the marvel of statists and historians 
and political philosophers. 

He saw the forces of tyranny marshalling 
themselves on every hand against the spirit 
of liberty, and he saw that the spirit of 
liberty was everywhere the spirit of the age. 
He foretold the nature of the coming strug- 



26 A Glance at Current History. 

gle, with its burden of grief for every home 
in Western Europe. He heard the tread of 
mighty armies and the sorrowing cry of 
oppressed multitudes ; a cry which was soon 
to change its accent and precipitate that 
frightful conflict which shook the earth. 
The hour was approaching when monarchs 
and priests and conquerors must unite to 
try conclusions in a death grapple with the 
awakened peoples — an hour when the new 
world might sever the ligatures which 
bound it to the old — an hour when America 
by one bold stroke might fling off the 
ancient traditions which else would forever 
entrammel her with the abuses and super- 
stitions of a despotic and benighted past. 

It was for the work of that hour that 
Patrick Henry was born. 

The informed historian discerns in him, 
not the " storm petrel of revolution," but the 
defender of inherited liberties. He came at 
a moment when free institutions were tremb- 



A Glance at Curbent History. 27 

ling in the balance. The old theory of kingly 
right to govern wrong was being again as- 
serted. The illimitable and unchecked right 
to tax was declared in the very terms which 
had demanded benevolences and ship-money. 
Lord North and the Earl of Bute and George 
the Third had formed a triune despotism 
which bore every mark of the despotism of 
Strafford and Laud and Charles the First. 
And it was the lot of Patrick Henry at 
that crucial moment to lead ,the forlorn 
hope of constitutional liberty just as John 
Hampden had led it, under the same con- 
ditions, a hundred years before. 

It is nothing to the purpose that the 
colonies won their independence, their State- 
hood, a few years before the coming of the 
grand catastrophe. Their action was sim- 
ply the first episode of that mighty drama. 
The prize battled for was the boon of civil 
liberty; the people interested were the civi- 
lized nations; and it was needful that the 



28 A Glance at Cukrent History. 

first blow should come from the Western 
hemisphere. And it is the glory of Henry 
that his genius discerned the end from the 
beginning — that he saw in the approaching 
downfall of crown and scepter and mitre, 
and all the infinite paraphernalia of old 
world oppression, mankind's best hope for 
the new world's deliverance. And so amidst 
the first mutterings of the storm which was 
to culminate in universal wreckage — amidst 
the portents which prefigured the vision of 
tottering thrones and shattered dynasties 
and crumbling empires, he upheld the 
brave faith that then and there might be 
laid, broad and deep, the enduring founda- 
tions of the temple of American liberty. 

It is safe to say that throughout his en- 
tire work Mr. Goldwin Smith never calls 
the name of a Virginian without bestowing 
upon him the tribute of his scorn. 

If sometimes he seems to praise Wash- 
ington it is only that he may be the better 



A Glance at Current History. 29 

able to mark, by force of contrast, the 
worthlessness of his followers and the bad- 
ness of his cause. 

"Without him," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, 
that cause "would have been ten times 
lost," and "the names of those who had 
drawn the country into the conflict would 
have gone down to posterity linked with 
defeat and shame." Still, continues the 
author, "we can hardly number among 
great captains a general who acted on 
so small a scale," one who "never won a 
battle," and whose final success after all 
"was due not to native valor but to foreign 
aid." The chief merit which he grants to 
Washington was "his calmness and self- 
control in contending with the folly and 
dishonesty of Congress and the fractious- 
ness of the State militia." As a commen- 
tary on the times he quotes a casual remark 
of Governeur Morris: "'Jay,' ejaculated 
Governeur Morris thirty years afterwards, 



30 A Glance at Current History. 

*what a lot of d d scoundrels we had in 

that Second Congress!' 'Yes/ said Jay, 
'we had/ and he knocked the ashes from 
his pipe." In a nation where all are blind, 
a one-eyed man will be king. And such is 
substantially the distinction which Mr. Gold- 
win Smith accords to George Washington. 

James Madison, one the most eminent 
and blameless statesmen of any age or na- 
tion is curtly dismissed as "a well-meaning 
man, but morally weak." 

Henry Clay, orator, patriot, pacificator — 
passionately beloved by his friends and 
honored even by his political opponents — 
devoted beyond all else to the welfare of 
his country, and ever ready to make any 
sacrifice at the shrine of an unbroken 
Union — who Curtius-like flung himself time 
and again into the abysses of sectional dis- 
cord, and whose whole life was a concord- 
ance of the placid words he spoke when he 
met his political defeat, "it is better to be 



A Glance at Cukkent History. 31 

right than president;" — this man, able, pure, 
magnanimous, generous in his ambitions, 
avowed in his convictions, steadfast in his 
aims, true to his friends, charitable to his 
opponents, flexible in expedients yet firm 
as the primal rocks where principle was in- 
volved; this man, the latchet of whose 
shoes his accuser is not worthy to unloose, 
is flippantly denounced as a mere "political 
acrobat," a "dazzling but artful politician 
who owed his fall to a false step in the 
practice of his own art." 

John Randolph, he tells us, had " natural 
ability" but lacked "good sense" and had 
" no power of self-control." * * * "With 
the arrogance of his class he would enter 
the Senate with his hunting whip in his 
hand, and behave as if he were in his 
kennel." 

The "behavior" of Virginians seems in- 
deed to be a subject of ever-recurring 
solicitude with Mr. Goldwin Smith. For 



32 A Glance at Cukrent History. 

he is exceeding strong on questions of 
deportment — a weighty judge of ''leather 
and prunello." 

"Let arts and commerce, laws and learning die, 
But, give us back our old nobility!" 

He makes the customary fling at "plan- 
tation manners," but is mildly surprised 
that " Franklin and Samuel Adams" should 
have been " lacking in the ordinary traits of 
gentlemen." As for Patrick Henry nothing 
better was to be expected, since "the char- 
acter of an English gentleman " is not to 
be formed "on a plantation or in the back- 
woods," — an opinion by the way which is 
anything but English if we exclude such 
authorities as the distinguished author, the 
'Arrys and 'Arriotts of Bow Bells, and the 
eminently respectable contingent of Ser- 
vants' Hall. 

The only American whom Mr. Goldwin 
Smith seems to hold in real regard is Gen- 



A Glance at Cuerent History. 33 

eral Benedict Arnold. "Arnold," he says, 
"was one of the best of the American com- 
manders and perhaps the most daring of 
them all." * * * "He was slighted and 
wronged by the politicians," and " seems 
to have despaired of the cause." As a 
patriot "he shrank from the idea of the 
French alliance." He believed "that France 
had designs on Canada." Under those cir- 
cumstances he resolved to enact the role 
of General Monk, and to that end opened 
negotiations with the British Connnander. 



In his treatment of incident Mr. Goldwin 
Smith is no less buoyant and free-handed 
than in his judgment of character. He has 
no prejudices; no bias. All kinds of 
knowledge are equally welcome; all sources 
of information equally meritorious. Any 
rumor of the camp, any scrap of idle 
gossip, any stray vagary of the newspaper 



34 A Glance at Current History. 

correspondent, so it meets his needs, is 
accounted proper pabulum for the Muse of 
History. 

Here are a few of his utterances, taken 
almost at random: 

" Jefferson Davis when captured " was 
"farcically disguised in woman's clothes." 

"The slaveholders escaped military ser- 
vice while they thrust the poor under fire." 

"Confederate prisoners were well fed, and 
suffered no hardships." "' * * " If many 
of them died it was because the caged eagle 
dies." 

"Guards pressed men in the streets" of 
Southern cities, and "conscripts were seen 
going to Lee's army in chains," 

The Southern clergy were "not only 
ignorant but cringing and degraded." 

"Jackson was nicknamed 'Stonewall'" be- 
cause of his steadfastness "on a field of 
general panic." 

Wilkes Booth was "a ranting Virginia 



A Glance at Current History. 35 

actor" who drew his inspiration from "the 
tyrannicide motto of his State." 

" At the taking of Fort Pillow the negroes 
were nailed to logs and burned alive." 

"Copperheads were so called from a rep- 
tile which waits on the rattlesnake, the 
rattlesnake being emblematic of the South." 

"The Northern press, unlike the slave 
press of the South, never misled the people 
by publishing false news of military suc- 
cesses." 

"The Southern lady was but the head of 
a harem." She "might be soft, elegant, and 
charming, tho there was an element in her 
character of a different kind, which civil 
war disclosed." 

Slanders and perversions such as these 
seem unworthy of serious refutation. They 
arouse loathing rather than resentment. And 
so amid our unutterable and unuttered con- 
tempt they generally escape rebuke. Yet 
the world believes them. It is nothing that 



36 A Glance at Current History. 

many of these fables are foolish and in- 
credible in themselves. It is nothing that 
they are false to nature, false to fact, false 
to the canons of fiction. It is nothing that 
they confute each other. It is nothing that 
they would be mutually destructive if they 
should meet, for they are scattered through- 
out many pages and are digested singly. 

Frightful stories are told of horrible tor- 
ture inflicted by Southerners on their hap- 
less prisoners. And charming pastorals are 
written on the lovingkindness of the North- 
ern people as manifested by their beneficent 
treatment of the captives in their hands. 
And yet when Mr. Goldwin Smith is con- 
fronted by the official prison records on 
each side — when it is shown that the death 
rate in Northern prisons exceeded the death 
rate in Southern prisons by nearly eight per 
cent. — the versatile author has his ready 
reason: "If many of the Southerners died 
it was because the caged eagle dies." 



A Glance at Current History. 37 

This in a sense is true, and is a just tho 
unconscious tribute to the soldiery of the 
South. Many of them did die as the caged 
eagle dies; they did beat out their hearts 
against the prison bars; their spirits at last 
did sink; their eyes, dauntless in battle, did 
grow dim. And so, tho they were still 
unsubdued, their pulses ceased at last to 
beat, and only their mortal clay remained 
to those who could destroy their bodies but 
could not quell their souls. 

The fidelity of the Confederate captive is 
without a parallel in human history. At 
any hour of any day freedom was his on 
the simple condition of swearing allegiance 
to the "Government of the United States." 

But what was the mood of this Southern 
soldier — this scion of a race of freemen — 
this bold spirit who under duress "dies as 
the caged eagle dies;" what was his mood 
of mind while he was being dragged "to 
Lee's army in chains?" Where then were 



38 A Glance at Current History. 

beak and claw and strength of wing? And 
with what sort of thrusting instrument did 
the "shirking slaveowners" "thrust him 
under fire? And how many chained eagles 
could one thruster "thrust forward at a 
time?" Or rather, perhaps, how many 
"shirking slaveholders" would be required 
to "thrust under fire" a single eagle, chained 
or unchained? 

And is not the South entitled to some 
off-set against the North on the score of 
this special cause of death? Was it only on 
one side that the vital spark was quenched 
by loss of liberty? Did no imprisoned 
Northern soldier "die as the caged eagle 
dies?" Would each and all have been 
happy and contented if "well fed" and 
sheltered from "hardship?" W^as it the 
Southern soldier alone who had none but 
moral griefs, while the Northern soldier had 
only material ones? And must indeed these 
mixed and incongruous absurdities be blindly 



A Glance at Current History. 39 

accepted as rational statements lest the 
"sacred interests of a broad and generous 
patriotism" be impaired? 

Mr. Goldwin Smith's argument is that the 
Southern captive, amid boundless abundance, 
pined and died, yearning for liberty, while 
the imprisoned Northerner had no thought 
or care beyond his need of food and shel- 
ter, this proving the Southerner to have 
been of the eartli earthy, and the North- 
erner to have been spiritual in a super- 
sublimated degree! 

It seems a little hard on the unillumi- 
nated that they should be expected to digest 
this sort of reasoning. Yet perhaps we 
ought to take such logic as we can get, and 
be thankful for it, inasmuch as the sacred 
right of might is hard to vindicate unless 
facts can be forced into harmony with the 
general hypothesis that the South is a re- 
gion of savagery while the North is a garden 
spot of all the christian virtues. 



40 A Glance at Cukrent History. 

Here are a few more extracts from this 
"latest and best" of American histories: 

"It was a contest," says Mr. Goldwin 
Smith, "between an iron despotism" on the 
one hand and "spontaneous zeal" on the 
other. 

"The South," continues the author, 
"almost from the first, resorted to conscrip- 
tion, ruthlessly enforced by the severest 
penalties," a course " from which Northern 
democracy shrank." 

" The South," he declares, " had the supe- 
riority of force which autocracy lends to 
war," while " the North had the advantage 
of the unforced efforts and sacrifices which 
free patriotism makes." 

And as conclusive proof of the invincible 
strength which "spontaneous zeal" and the 
" unforced efforts " of " free patriotism " con- 
fer upon a "popular government" Mr. 
Goldwin Smith might aptly have called at- 
tention to the memorable interview between 



A Glance at Current History. 41 

the British Minister and the Hon. William 
H. Seward: 

"I can touch a bell at my right hand," 
said the Secretary of State, ''and order the 
arrest of a citizen of Ohio; I can touch the 
bell again, and order the arrest of a citizen 
of New York. Can Queen Victoria do as 
much?" 

Lord Lyons, with closed eyes, slowly and 
silently shook his head. Yet he might have 
replied: "It is true, Mr. Secretary, that my 
sovereign, in this our modern age, has not 
the authority which you so justly claim; 
nor indeed had his puissant majesty, George 
the Third; yet I doubt not that some such 
proof of power might have been given in 
the good old days of Henry the Eighth." 



The liberty of the press is a subject on 
which our author grows eloquent — holding 
that in the North it was absolutely free, 



42 A Glance at Cuekent History. 

while in the South it was but *' a sounding 
board to register the decrees of tyranny." 
On topics of this class it is really difficult 
to judge whether or not Mr. Gold win Smith 
is writing in good faith. The feeling con- 
stantly arises that there is a sly sarcasm, a 
lurking irony in his praises of the North. 
In tlie blandest manner he lays down broad 
propositions which are not only destitute of 
truth but which are specifically and in de- 
tail the exact reverse of truth. 

Every Northern man who lived through 
the war knows that under the Lincoln gov- 
ernment there was no such thing as free- 
dom of the press. It is true that before 
mobbing or destroying that palladium of 
libert}^ the " truly loyal " would lash them- 
selves into a state of moral exaltation by 
denouncing as " rebel sympathisers " all who 
dared to remind them of their covenanted 
obligations — all who dared to quote the 
Declaration of Independence, or appeal to 



A Glance at Current History. 43 

the Constitution of the United States. And 
so, from the great cities on tlie Atlantic 
coast to the Httle villages on the Western 
frontier, every opponent of radicalism, every 
supporter of Statehood, every democratic 
editor who failed to raise the abject squeak 
that he Avas "a war-democrat" was forth- 
with denounced as an "enemy to free in- 
stitutions," and patriotically raided, robbed, 
muzzled and terrorized until crushed out of 
existence or brought into a loyal frame of 
mind. 

Now turn to the South. During the 
whole life of the Confederacy her press was 
absolutely free. Even when confronted by 
the united hosts of Europe, Asia, and 
Africa — even when beset by tenfold num- 
bers and by resources mounting up to ten 
times ten — from the beginning to the end — 
through all mutations of victory or defeat 
— no matter what her power or what her 
needs, the Confederate government, by spe- 



44 A Glance at Cuekent Histoby. 

cial enactment, gave absolute exemption 
from military service to every individual 
who was connected with her newspaper 
press. 

"A sounding board," indeed! Read the 
editorials of the chief newspaper published 
at her capital — the editorials of the Rich- 
mond Examiner. They have been repub- 
lished in book form since the war and may 
be easily obtained. The editor was John 
M. Daniel — a man of note — able, haughty, 
resolute; a recluse bitter with the bitterness 
of misanthrop)'' yet devoured by an insati- 
able ambition. Passionately pleading for a 
better equipment in the field, and disgusted 
with the complacent self-sufficiency of the 
war office, he assailed the sanctities of that 
august body, and thence drifted into antag- 
onism with Mr. Davis' entire administration. 
The breach was never healed, and from the 
beginning to the end of the war he searched 
out and gave to open day every blot and 



A Glance at Cueeent Histoey. 45 

every error of every department of the Con- 
federate government. Never since the days 
of Sir Phihp Francis had mortal hand 
grasped a more trenchant pen, and never 
was the work of a single pen fraught with 
more momentous consequences. Under the 
Lincoln despotism a writer such as Daniel 
could not have iield his hberty a single day. 

So much for the "autocracy" which lent 
the South her "superiority in war." So 
much for the "iron despotism" which, not- 
withstanding autocracy, was overthrown by 
the "spontaneous zeal" of the North! 

Does not Mr. Goldwin Smith know that 
he is giving his readers either pointless sar- 
casm or utter rubbish? Does he not know 
that the facts are notoriously and demon- 
strably the exact reverse of what he states 
them to be? 

Again, the author says that "the South, 
almost from the first, resorted to conscrip- 
tion, ruthlessly enforced by the severest 



46 A Glance at Querent History. 

penalties," a course " from which Northern 
democracy shrank." 

Does he not know that the Northern con- 
scription was as savage and remorseless as 
that of the invaded country was orderly and 
mild? Does lie not know that what the 
^' spontaneous " patriots really " shrank " 
from was the decoys and trepanners who 
filled the union-saving ranks at so much 
per union-saver? Does lie not know that 
on a single occasion, in the streets of a 
single Northern city, more than a thousand 
recusant patriots were shot down like mad 
dogs while flying in terror before the 
crimps and kidnappers and press-gangs of 
the Lincoln government? 

But we bid adieu to Mr. Goldwin Smith. 
He, in turn, is to be set aside. He is alto- 
gether too mild a mannered man to meet 
present demands. His vituperation of the 
^' rebels " falls short in acrimony, while his 
adulation of the yankees lacks the required 



A Glance at Current History. 47 

unction. (" Rebel " and *' Yankee " — how 
pat as echo the one term calls forth the 
other.") 



The history committee of the Grand 
Arm}'- of the Republic seems to have finally 
settled on a definite plan. And the plan in 
some respects is so full of promise that it 
will doubtless be adopted. The aim is two- 
fold — to render the rebel more odious than 
history has thus far depicted him, and at 
the same time to put the yankee in such a 
position that the world will be compelled 
to admire him! 

For the attainment of so patriotic an end 
surely nothing more should be needed than 
the Grand Army's simple requisition. The 
needful appropriation might be graced by a 
paean or two to the old flag, and all should 
go smoothly. Else, what is the good of 
victory and victory's lawful fruits? — fame, 



48 A Glance at Current History. 

wealth, honor, reputation, and full control 
of "history's purchased page?" 

The proposed plan is to be official, gov- 
ernmental, authoritative. The required his- 
tory is to be written by a duly appointed 
and truly loyal personage who is to gather 
his war material solely from the "dis- 
patches" on file at Washington. But right 
there, we apprehend, will be found the fly 
in the ointment. 

Think of it. History by the transcrip- 
tion of yankee dispatches! Bewildering 
dispatches ! Unhappy historian ! — the wings 
of his imagination close clipped, and him- 
self bound by both literary and patriotic 
obligation to harmonize with the actual sit- 
uation, and with one another, the varied 
dispatches of commanders who never, no 
" never misled the people by publishing 
false news of military successes ! " 

Take a handful of the most important 
dispatches of the war. Or, still better, take 



A Glance at Cuerent History. 49 

the chief dispatches of the Grand Army's 
chosen heroes — the radical repubhcan gen- 
erals, the men of immaculate loyalty, the 
gleaming meteors of war — Benjamin Butler, 
Banks, Hooker, Pope, O. O. Howard. 

Turn to Hooker's dispatch when he had 
Lee "at his mercy:" "The rebels must 
attack us in our chosen position, or inglo- 
riously fly ! " The rebels did not fly, but 
they attacked ; whereupon the gallant corps 
of O. O. Howard marched out of history 
with unexampled alacrit}^ while the exultant 
dispatch-bearer spurred hard for Washington 
with Stonewall's troopers at his heels! 

Butler's dispatches are a vibrating note 
of triumph from Big Bethel in '61 to Ber- 
muda Hundred in '64. The former affair 
was really a drawn battle, the two wings of 
his army having lost their way, until they 
at length collided, whereupon they fired into 
each other until mutually satisfied, and then 
simultaneously retired. Butler claimed it 



60 A Glance at Cuerent History. 

as a double victory, but history has not 
allowed the claim. In his Bermuda cam- 
paign he announced his position as being 
"impregnable against an}^ numbers which 
the rebels might bring against him." A 
narrow space between the rivers was the 
onl}'^ point of entrance or exit. So Beaure- 
gard with a handful of troops turned the 
position against him, or '' bottled him up," 
as Grant expressed it, and Butler, as a v/ar- 
rior, was heard from no more. 

General Banks was pre-eminently distin- 
guished as a dispatch writer, whether wag- 
ing war amid the cotton bales of the Red 
River or " chasing the rebels '' in the Val- 
ley of Virginia. But his campaigns were 
peculiar, being modeled on the maritime 
principle of fighting in a circle, so that 
whenever he overtook the rebels he was 
pretty sure to find them busy among his 
supply trains. The hungry Confederates 
held him in affectionate regard and gener- 



A Glance at Current History. 5J 

ally spoke of him as "Old Stonewall's 
Commissary," altho in his dispatches he 
modestly forbore to mention the rank they 
gave him. 

General Pope was also famous for his 
dispatches, and never were those dispatches 
more aglow with victory than whilst he was 
being cuffed and cudgeled from the banks 
of the Rappahannock to the walls of Wash- 
ington. At the very moment that he was 
declaring the rebels to be in headlong 
flight, the General-in-Chief, Halleck, frantic 
with terror, was imploring McClellan to 
force his marches and save the Capital! 

Truly, this official history will be worth 
the waiting for; particularly as the histo- 
rian is to be put under orders to arrange 
the dispatches " patriotically," — that is, in 
such shape as to debase the rebel and exalt 
the yankee! 

And yet this subject has its sad side too. 
The "History" will have its vogue, every- 



52 A Glance at Current History. 

body will want to read it, but during that 
lively period what will the poor comic 
papers do ? 

Those friends of the Grand Army who 
have a sense of humor are apprehensive 
that that patriotic body is in danger of 
being laughed out of existence. And in 
this emergency it is proposed to enlarge 
the powers of Government so that a new 
code of laws may be enacted — laws which 
shall make it a penal offence to speak with 
levity of patriotic persons, or to utter re- 
proachful or slighting or irreverent words 
when speaking of any project which enjoys 
the support of "loyal" men. A "truthful 
history" is to be ordered "by act of Con- 
gress," and "publishers are to be fined and 
imprisoned" if they "issue works" which 
are calculated "to wrongly impress the 
minds of the growing generation regarding 
the Rebellion." 

Considered as an emanation of the Puri- 



A Glance at Curkent History. 53 

tan spirit, all this is perfectly logical. He 
cares not who fights his battles so that he 
alone is left to record them. That has 
always been a Puritan prerogative, and he 
does not propose to abandon it. He has 
laid aside his steeple hat and his sour vis- 
age and his sad-colored raiment, but at 
bottom he is the same old Puritan. He has 
dropped his sanctimonious snuffle and the 
upward turning of his eyes because he 
began to perceive that those outward signs 
of inward grace were putting the unregene- 
rate on their guard against him. But he 
is still the genuine article. A Pharisee 
always, he is not to be judged by any com- 
mon standard; for a being of his lofty pre- 
tentions, if not incomparably better than 
other men, is bound to be immeasurably 
worse. Moving craftily to his ends, now 
with a flash of simulated zeal and anon 
with a placid saintliness, but always disguis- 
ing his tyranny and greed by special claims 



54 A Glance at Cubeent History. 

to holiness, he is to-day the same intrusive 
meddler, with the same inborn passion for 
regulating other peoples' affairs, that he was 
when England vomited him forth to tlie 
Continent and when the Continent in turn 
spewed him to the shores of the New 
World. 

Self-styled as the apostle of liberty, he 
has ever claimed for himself the liberty of 
persecuting all who presumed to differ with 
him. Self-appointed as the champion of 
unity and harmony, he has carried discord 
into every land that his foot has smitten. 
Exalting himself as the defender of free- 
dom of thought, his favorite practice has 
been to muzzle the press and to adjourn 
legislatures with the sword. Vaunting him- 
self as the only true disciple of the living 
God, he has done more to bring sacred 
things into disrepute than has been accom- 
plished by all the apostates of all the ages, 
from Judas Iscariot to Robert G. Ingersoll. 



A Glance at CuepvENT History. 55 

Born in revolt against law and order — breed- 
ing schism in the Church and faction in 
the State — seceding from every organization 
to which he had pledged fidelity — nullifying 
all law, human and divine, which lacked 
the seal of his approval — evermore setting 
up what he calls his conscience against the 
most august of constituted authorities and 
the most sacred of covenanted obligations, 
he yet has the impregnable conceit to pose 
himself in the world's eye as the only sur- 
viving specimen of political or moral worth. 
On two occasions he has been clothed^ 
for a brief period, with absolute power, and 
in each instance he taught his victims what 
"persecution" really meant. In the tide of 
time, men have been governed in many 
ways — by councils and oligarchies — by 
prophets, priests and kings — by the despot- 
ism of tyrants and the despotism of mobs — 
by fools and philosophers— by learned sages 
and by savage chieftains — but they knew 



56 A Glance at Cuekent Histoey. 

not the meaning of tyranny until they fell 
under the Puritan dominion, and learned 
what it was to be governed by a brood of 
world-regenerating saints and vanity-inspired 
busybodies. 

"Be you a witch?" roared the embodied 
majesty of Massachusetts to a trembling 
paralytic. 

" No, your honor," was the reply. 

" Officer, said the Court, " take her away 
and pull out her toe-nails with a pair of 
hot pincers, and then see what she says; 
for verily it is written that 'thou shalt not 
suffer a witch to live ! ^ " 

Thus with the act of cruelty goes ever 
the perverted text. 

" We were an hungered, and the salvages 
had much store of corn, and many gar- 
ments made of the skins of beasts, and it 
came to pass that we went forth and fell 
upon them, smiting them hip and thigh, 
even with the knife of Ehud and the ham- 



A Glance at Current History. 57 

mer of Jael, crying aloud and sparing not, 
and their spoil became an heritage unto us, 
even unto us and our children." 

This precious screed, which serves its 
turn in sanctifying robbery and murder, is 
in fair accord with that practical and profit- 
able tenet which has so often been to him 
a rule of action: "Thou hast said in Thy 
Word that 'unto the saints should be given 
the earth and the fulness thereof,' and verily 
we are the saints." 

That the press should be silenced at his 
bidding, that courts should be reconstructed 
and constitutions tossed aside, is simply a 
necessity of the situation. The men of 
Belial must be put down. 

Under ordinary circumstances there should 
seem to be no particular harm in men's 
speaking of facts which they had witnessed, 
or in describing events in which they had 
participated, or in recording the history 
which they had made. 



58 A Glance at Current History. 

But the Puritan has always been a law 
unto himself, and by virtue of his " supe- 
rior toleration" he has now become a law 
unto others. Moreover being guided by 
that inner light which shines for him alone, 
there must be no appeal from the justice 
of his judgments or the righteousness of 
his decrees. 

Tlie Puritan heretofore has made some 
little amends by furnishing to mankind an 
enduring target for scorn and mirth and 
derision. But now we are to be deprived 
of even that slight compensation — the poor 
privilege of laughing at him. It is too bad! 

It is related of the Roman tyrant, Aure- 
lius Commodus, that, fired by martial ardor, 
" he entered the arena, sword in hand, 
against a wretched gladiator who was armed 
only with a foil of lead, and that after 
shedding the blood of his helpless victim, 
he struck medals to commemorate the in- 
glorious victory." 



A Glance at Current History. 59 

That fame at any price was precious in 
the sight of Aurelius is sufficiently evident^ 
yet we nowhere read that he forbade his 
people to laugh or weep or jibe at his 
novel way of attaining it. 



On the general subject of State Sover- 
eignty, and its relation to secession and 
nullification, it is well enough to set down 
a few facts which the coming history will 
doubtless fail to remember. And if the 
facts seem '^ calculated to impress wrongly 
the minds of the growing generation" v/hy 
" so much the worse for the facts." 

That sterling patriot and life-long Union- 
ist, John Janney, of Loudoun county, was 
chosen President of the Peace Convention 
of 1861. On being twitted by a youthful 
delegate for his State Sovereignty tenden- 
cies, the old patriarch said : " Disunion 
would be the greatest calamity that could 



60 A Glance at Cureent History. 

befall our State; but, sir, secession is her 
lawful right, and she alone must determine 
the expediency of exercising it." * * * 
"Virginia, sir, is to-day a free and sovereign 
State; and she was a nation one hundred 
and eighty years before the Union was born." 

This principle of Statehood had been 
everywhere recognized by Americans up to 
the time of the war, and nowhere more 
persistently than by the people of Massa- 
chusetts and the New England States. 

In her convention of 1780 Massachusetts 
declared that her people had the sole and 
exclusive right of governing themselves as 
a free, sovereign, and independent State, 
and that they, and they alone, had the in- 
defeasible right to institute, reform, alter or 
totally change that government whenever 
their happiness or welfare might seem to 
require it. 

Thirteen years later, when war with Great 
Britain seemed almost unavoidable, the New 



A Glance at Cureent History. 61 

Englanders put forth Hon. Timothy Dwight 
as their spokesman, and through him de- 
clared that they would have no part or lot 
in such a war, and sooner than have it 
forced upon them they would go out of the 
Union. 

So, too, when the Louisiana purchase 
was under discussion. Massachusetts bit- 
terly opposed it and threatened to exercise 
what she called her "unquestioned right of 
secession " if the measure should be per- 
sisted in. Senator George Cabot was the . 
leader on that occasion. 4 ^^*x^ «A^ K •xa^v*.'^ 

Indeed, from the very beginning, the New » 
England States left nothing untried to pre- 
vent the territorial growth of our country. 
In the words of Bancroft, "An ineradicable 
dread of the coming power of the South- 
west lurked in New England, especially in 
Massachusetts." And if they could have 
had their way, the Mississippi river would 
now be our western frontier. 



62 A Glance at Cureent History. 

Another distinguished secessionist was 
Senator Pickering, also of Massachusetts. 
He did not hke Mr. Jefferson's administra- 
tion at all. There was something about it 
which he said was " not congenial " to his 
feelings or the feelings of New England. 
So he proposed a general dissolution of the 
Union v/ith a view to the formation of a 
Northern Confederacy, The scheme was 
favored by New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut and 
Vermont, yet it was deemed imprudent to 
act without the alliance of New York, who 
was promised a dominant iniiuence in the 
new league. But New York declined with 
thanks and the project fell through. 

In 1804 the Legislature of Massachusetts 
asserted and defined the principle of seces- 
sion by the following enactment: "That the 
annexation of Louisiana to the Union tran- 
scends the constitutional power of the 
Government of the United States. It forms 



A Glance at Current History. 63 

a new Confederacy, to which the States 
united by tiie former compact are not 
bound to adhere." 

In the debate on the bill for the admis- 
sion of Louisiana, the representative of 
Massaciiusetts, Hon. Josiali Qiiincy, said: 
"If the bill passes, it is my deliberate judg- 
ment that it is virtually a dissolution of the 
Union; that it will free the States from 
their moral obligation; and, as it will be 
the right of all, so it will be the duty of 
some, definitely to prepare for a separation — 
amicably if they can, violently if they 
must." At this conjuncture a Southern 
member raised the point that " the sugges- 
tion of a dissolution of the Union was out 
of order; but, on appeal, the House sus- 
tained Mr. Quincy, who, in an elaborate 
argument, vindicated the rightfulness of se- 
cession, saying, among other things: "Is 
there a principle of public law better settled 
or more conformable to the plainest sugges- 



64 A Glance at Current History. 

tions of reason than that the violation of a 
contract by one of the parties may be con- 
sidered as exempting the other from its 
obHgations? Suppose in private Ufe thirteen 
form a partnership, and ten of them under- 
take to admit a new partner without the 
concurrence of the other three, would it not 
be at their option to abandon the partner- 
ship, after so palpable an infringement of 
their rights?" 

This reasoning goes to the heart of the 
matter. It asserts that the States are inde- 
pendent political organisms — or rather that 
they were so in those anti-bellum days — and 
that all the massed power of majorities 
could not drag down the principle of sov- 
ereignty, altho that principle might be 
enthroned in but a single State. 

In 1812 Massachusetts and Connecticut 
refused to allow their militia to be sent 
beyond their State lines, and on being left 
to their own devises they quarrelled with 



A Glance at Current History. 65 

the Administration for refusing to pay them 
for making a local defense on their own 
account. Meantime the Governor of Massa- 
chusetts occupied himself in calling a public 
fast-day for deploring the war against a 
nation which had long been the " bulwark 
of the religion we profess." The good old 
town of Plymouth, having risen from its 
knees, presently got into a muscular mood, 
and having captured one of the Congress- 
man who voted for the war, forthwith gave 
a free exhibition of their untrammelled lib- 
erty by "kicking him through the town." 

Finally the Supreme Court of Massachu- 
setts poured oil on the troubled waters by 
deciding that neither Congress nor the Presi- 
dent had anything to do with the State 
forces, but that the Governor was the man. 
So the Governor settled the matter by re- 
fusing the request of the President for her 
quota of troops, and the Massachusetts 
House of Representatives clinched the whole 



66 A Glance at Current History. 

subject by declaring the war to be unholy, 
and begging the people to do what they 
could to thwart it. 

In short, on all occasions of domestic 
disquiet or foreign war the history of New 
England has been a history of revolt, and 
threatened separation, and nullification, and 
secession, and persistent defiance of the 
authority of Congress and the Federal 
Courts. 

Jefferson's Embargo was never really 
tried, because the New England States 
threatened to secede if its provisions should 
be carried out, and it was accordingly re- 
pealed in the vain hope of appeasing them. 

But it was on the actual breaking out of 
hostilities that New England showed the 
real quality of her "devotion to the Union." 
She not only did her best to nullify every 
law passed by Congress for raising men 
and money, but some of "her best citizens" 
intrigued with British agents for an alliance 



A Glance at Current History. 67 

with Canada, while others hung out signal 
lights to enable the enemy's fleet to cap- 
ture our disabled cruisers — deeds which 
would have richly deserved the halter if 
committed by ordinary mortals, but which 
won for them the enthusiastic plaudits of 
their kind. 

That the Hartford Convention of 1814 was 
not simply a secession but a treasonable 
body admits of no rational doubt. The 
object was not merely to destroy the Union, 
but to enleague the revolted States with 
Great Britain, so that the new Confederacy 
and its ally might be in a position to sub- 
jugate the adhering States. The present race 
of New England apologists pretend that the 
Convention was "merely an assemblage of 
some of the Federal leaders," but the plain 
facts of history discredit their claim. The 
delegates from Connecticut, Rhode Island 
and Massachusetts were regularly elected by 
the Legislatures of those States, and con- 



68 A Glance at Cuerent History. 

stituted in every respect an official body 
acting in a representative capacity. Their 
deliberations were held in secret, and no 
full account of their proceedings has ever 
been published, but they publicly announced 
their adherence to the doctrine of State 
Sovereignty, full and absolute, declaring 
that: "When emergencies occur which are 
either beyond the reach of judicial tribunals 
or too pressing to admit of delay incident 
to their forms. States which have no com- 
mon umpire must be their own judges and 
execute their own decisions." 



In 1861 the Southern people, weary of 
discord, exercised this sovereign right. They 
withdrew from their restless and conten- 
tious neighbors, and formed a more harmo- 
nious Union among themselves, asking only 
to be let alone. The "emergency" which 
confronted them was the enthronement of 



A Glance at Cukrent History. 69 

a hostile and revolutionary faction — a fac- 
tion which at a fatal moment had come 
into power through a triple division among 
the law-abiding classes. 

These new rulers had chiefly distinguished 
themselves as the enemies of existing insti- 
tutions — their political and social creed 
being, in effect, "Whatever is, is wrong." 
They were fond of execrating the Union as 
"a league with hell," and denouncing the 
Constitution as "a covenant with death." 
They derided the highest courts of the land 
as "crimping houses of iniquity," and villi- 
fied the old flag as "a flaunting lie!" 

But on coming into power they threw off 
all disguise, and shamelessly started a war 
of conquest in pretended defense of the 
very principles and symbols which they had 
80 bitterly reviled. 

With paralyzing logic they mutilated the 
States on the plea that the States were 
"indestructible;" they debarred them from 



70 A Glance at Current History. 

the Union while declaring the Union to be 
"indissoluble," and they patched up and 
distorted the Constitution on the pretence 
that they were the only class who rev- 
erenced its "inviolability." Having thus 
approved themselves the only true cham- 
pions of "the sacred principle of govern- 
ment by consent," they rounded out their 
perfect work by converting the States into 
satrapies, and holding them under bayonet 
rule until the conquered people consented 
to ratify the whole of their rump perform- 
ances. No wonder they are yearning for a 
historian of their ownl — no wonder they 
are drafting laws to give that historian sole 
control of the facts! 

As for the South, she accepted war when 
no other recourse was left her. And she 
has borne its results, bitter tho they have 
been, with the serenity of fortitude and the 
dignity of silence. Conscious of rectitude 
in aim and deed, she has been willing to 



A Glance at Cubrent History. 71 

leave her cause to the tribunal of posterity. 
Like the princess in the Eastern story, she 
has held her course, unshaken by clamor, 
unmoved by taunts and sneers, and without 
one backward glance has swept on toward 
the Golden Fountain of the Future. She 
has been content to leave her name and 
memory "to men's charitable speeches, to 
foreign nations and the next age." She 
frankly concedes that under the new Union, 
and the revised Constitution, and the im- 
proved laws, and the generally amended 
polity, there may have been innovations 
with which she has not kept pace, and 
which she does not fully comprehend. But 
when she is threatened with pains and pen- 
alties for presuming to relate to her own 
children the simple annals of her life, she 
believes that it is fairly within her right 
to enter a mild and respectful yet earnest 
protest. 



ON HISTORY AS TAUGHT IN OUR 
SCHOOLS. 



A LETTER OF INVITATION. 



The following circular letter explains itself. It was 
heartily responded to, and resulted in a magnificent 
assemblage at Lee Camp Hall on the evening of Octo* 
ber 19, 1897. The meeting was addressed by a number 
of the foremost citizens of Virginia, among them : Con- 
sul-General Fitzhugh Lee, Governor O'Ferrall, Mayor 
Taylor, Dr. Hunter McGuire, Colonel Gordon McCabe, 
Professor McGuire, and others. A permanent organi- 
zation was effected, with Dr. McGuire as presiding 
officer, and the proposed task of banishing false histo- 
ries from the schools and colleges of the State was 
promptly entered upon and seems in a fair way of being 
thoroughly accomplished. 



ON HISTORY AS TAUGHT IN OUR 
SCHOOLS. 



Headquarters Grand Camp Confederate Vete- 
rans, Department of Virginia, Glen Allen, 
Va., September 2g, iSgy. 

Deae Sm, — The Grand Commander, as au- 
thorized by the Advisory Council, hereby 
extends to you a cordial invitation to attend 
a general meeting to be held at Lee Camp 
Hall, in Richmond, Va., on Tuesday, Octo- 
ber 19, 1897, at 8 o'clock P. M. 

This proposed gathering of leading edu- 
cators and eminent citizens of Virginia is 
called for the purpose of formulating a 
definite plan for the exclusion from our 



78 On History as Taught 

schools and colleges of all histories which 
are grossly erroneous in their statements, 
or which, in their animus, are unfriendly to 
the State. 

A careful examination of those school 
histories which are now in general use 
among us discloses the fact that they are 
all written by persons who placidty assume 
that the American States in some unex- 
plained way had divested themselves of 
their Statehood at some unnamed period 
prior to 1860, and that the States which at 
that time exercised their sovereign right by 
withdrawing from the federal union thereby 
■committed an act of "rebellion" against 
their former associates! 

This false assumption, first urged by des- 
perate partisans, and afterwards dogmatised 
into an article of faith, now dominates all 
these Northern historians, and vitiates every 
portion of their work. And thus our in- 
genuous youth are taught to believe that 



IN Our Schools. 7^ 

their fathers were traitors to their country 
and subvertors of the Constitution and the 
laws. True, in most of these histories the 
word "rebel" has been cancelled, and in 
its place the term "confederate" now ap- 
pears; and there are also favorable com- 
ments on the prowess of these confederates 
and on the military skill of their leaders. 
But always and everywhere the inference 
is constant that the Southern people were 
false to the obligation of patriotism and 
enemies of their country. 

Lord Macau lay utters an important truth 
when he declares that "a people who take 
no pride in the achievements of their an- 
cestors will never achieve anything worthy 
to be remembered by their descendants." 
And our conquerors now assure us that the 
highest favor we can expect from the world 
is "its merciful silence." 

Are we indeed reduced to this narrow 
choice between infamy and oblivion ? 



80 On Histoky as Taught 

Let us hope not. 

And let us act on that hope. 

There is no desire to re-open settled 
questions, or to evade the physical results 
of the war. We accepted an appeal to the 
sword, and we abide the result without re- 
pining. But never did we put to the hazard 
of war our right to speak the truth, or the 
right of our children to hear it. 

Our race, from the dawn of its history, 
has freely criticised the acts and views and 
purposes of both friend and foe. Briton 
and Dane, Saxon and Norman, Yorkist and 
Lancastrian, Puritan and Cavalier, in song 
and story and on the written page have 
recounted their stirring deeds through a 
thousand years; and ever the defeated side, 
strengthened by adversity and nourished by 
tales of fortitude, has risen again to the 
level of its victor; and the conflicting 
breeds, welded not less by war than by 
comity, have become at last the master- 



IN Our Schools. 81 

race of all the earth. Their stories of 
mutual strife awaken a spirit of generous 
emulation, and the memorials of their fellest 
battles adorn a common Pantheon and aug- 
ment their heritage of a common glory. 
For in an atmosphere of free utterance, 
hatred cannot long abide. It is born of a 
sense of injustice, and gathers its chief 
nourishment from repression. And so, in 
behalf of a rational and lasting concord — a 
concord open as the day — with nothing to 
conceal and nothing to simulate — standing 
on exact level with our conquerors — we 
propose to follow the ancient usage of our 
race. We propose to relate the annals of 
our own war to our own children in our 
own way. We propose to describe in the 
plainest and simplest language the causes 
and the character of that war. For only 
thus can we rescue from infamy the mem- 
ory of our fallen comrades. Only thus can 
we pay a fitting tribute to the devotion of 



82 On History as Taught 

our noble women. Only thus can we blot 
out the felon-brand of "traitor" from the 
kingly brow of Robert Edward Lee. 

Let not our Northern friends mistake our 
purpose. The war is over. Decisive bat- 
tles are the expression of a law which is 
beyond themselves; they follow the trend 
of events and are but the incidents of a 
power which overshadows them. Appomat- 
tox was the culmination of a strife which 
was active before the Union was born, and 
the decree there rendered is as absolute 
and as irrevocable as that of Culloden or 
of Hastings. Never again will peril ap- 
proach our country on territorial lines. 
What may arise within the heart and centre 
of the Republic it were idle to conjecture. 
Perhaps only a phantom, formless and void. 
But should that phantom take shape, should 
it cast its dark shadow along the northern 
horizon, it might well befall that the des- 
pised South, true to herself, unshaken in 



m Our Schools. 83 

her integrity, faithful to her traditions and 
her principles, might again lead in giving 
to all our land the priceless boon of free- 
dom joined with order, of liberty linked 
with law. 

If, sir, you share the views thus meagerly 
outlined, or any of them, it is earnestly 
hoped that you will join us in this effort. 
We need your counsel, your influence, 
your intellectual and moral support. The 
eleventh hour is upon us, and unless we 
act unitedly and with sustained energy the 
memory of our Cause will go down to pos- 
terity loaded with derision and shame. 

We sincerely hope that you will come, at 

almost any sacrifice, to help in this patriotic 

work. 

By order of 

John Cussons, 
Thomas Ellett, Grand Commander, 

Adjutant- General. 



ON "TEACHABLE" HISTORY. 



GRAND COMMANDER'S ADDRESS. 



The object of the Lee Camp Hall Meeting of Septem- 
ber 29, 1897, was outlined by the Grand Commander in 
the following address : 



ON ''TEACHABLE" HISTORY. 



The hearty applause that greeted Dr. 
McGuire's utterances had hardly died away 
when Colonel Cussons came forward. He 
was given a most cordial greeting, which 
he acknowledged with a bow. The Grand 
Commander spoke in clear voice and with 
great vigor and earnestness. He said: 

Mr. Chairman, Friends, Cmnrades, 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Seven years ago the Confederate Veterans 
of Virginia, through their Grand Camp, ap- 
pointed a committee on history. The chief 
object was to point out the need for a text- 



90 On ''Teachable" History. 

book which should give a fair and inipar- 
tial account of our late war. And it was 
believed that the appearance of such a 
work would at once banish from our schools 
the biassed and misleading histories which 
were then in use. That hope has been 
disappointed. It is true that able pens re- 
sponded promptly to the committee's call, 
and Virginia to-day is notably rich in school 
histories of the very highest order. And 
yet these meritorious books have failed to 
displace the unworthy ones. 

In literary ability, in fidelity to truth, in 
lucidity of narrative, in simplicity of style, 
in skill of compression, and in all the 
mechanical qualities which comprise the 
bookmaker's art, we shall nowhere find any- 
thing superior to the works of our own 
Virginia writers. And these books have 
the widest range of adaptability. They are 
suited to pupils of every age. From Mrs. 
Williamson's "Life of Lee," a model of 



On "Teachable" History. 91 

historical biography for the infant class — 
through the primary and advanced text- 
books of Maury and Dr. Jones, and Mrs. 
Pendleton Lee, and Miss Mary Tucker 
Magill — up to the sedate and scholarly ex- 
position of J. L. M. Curry, there is abso- 
lutely no need which has not been most 
abundantly met. 

What, then, bars the way? Why is it 
that we cannot get into the hands of our 
own children these annals of our OAvn life 
by our own authors? 

I hold in my hand a s3mibol of the 
power which forbids it. 

This history, among all the histories 
which have been written in this historic 
age, is the only one, we are gravely in- 
formed, that is at all adapted to school-room 
requirements — the only one which possesses 
the mystic attribute of 'Reachability!''' 

And, surely, if '' teachability '' means an 
aptitude for reaching false conclusions by 



92 On "Teachable" Histoey. 

smooth and subtle ways — for making the 
worse appear the better part — for blandly- 
distorting facts, and with an air of candor 
preverting honest truths — then, indeed, may 
this book be pronounced ^^ teachabW'' in a 
very eminent degree. 

Like some other evil things, it is sugared 
over with adulation. And where it most 
abounds in florid compliment it is most 
misleading and most dangerous. Its worst 
vices, however, are not of the gross and 
obvious kind. They are unobtrusive. They 
lie beneath the surface. But they are con- 
stant; and during the war period they are 
close-woven into the very texture of the 
story. To adequately show this by citations 
would be a tedious task. And to quote a 
passage here and there would be to imitate 
the traveller who tried to give his friends 
an idea of the magnitude of the Coliseum 
by showing them a few bricks which he 
had wrenched out of its walls. 



On "Teachable" Histoby. 93 

Here is a specimen brick: "Invasion of 
Maryland." This book always calls it an 
"invasion" when Southern troops go North. 
When Northern troops go South it calls it 
"marching to the front.^' I quote: "Flushed 
with success, Lee now crossed the Potomac 
and entered Marjdand, hoping to secure 
volunteers and excite an insurrection." 

Think of it. Robert E. Lee an insurrec- 
tionist ! 

That is what we have been teaching our 
children for years. That is what we are 
teaching them to-day. Is it any wonder 
that they are getting a bit ashamed of us? 
that they are telhng us "the less said about 
the war the better?" 

But while we are on the subject of 
insurrection, let us see what this teachable 
history has to say about Old Ossawattomie 
Brown, the Free-Soil desperado of Kansas. 
Brown was reputed the most lawless and 
the most fearless of all those freebooters — a 



94 On "Teachable" History. 

man of iron nerve and bloody hand — and 
with this reputation he was cliosen !)y the 
New England Abolitionists to carry fire and 
sword to the peaceful homes of Virginia. 
It was those social regenerators who fur- 
nished fortli his military chest. They 
equipped him with weapons for the arming 
of a thousand men, and sent liim on a 
crusade which must inevitably seal his 
doom unless he should be able to incite 
and maintain that most frightful of all 
human scourges — a servile insurrection ! 

And what does this teachable history have 
to say about it? — this history which teaches 
that Lee was an insurrectionist ? We find 
Brown exalted into a hero and a martyr, 
rather than a criminal. He is depicted as 
a brooding enthusiast, inspired by lofty 
motives, but unable to carry out his great 
designs. 

No hint is given of the men whom he 
cruelly murdered on that tranquil Sabbath 



On "Teachable" History. 95 

morning at Harper's Ferry. No mention is 
made of tlie peaceful citizens whom he 
seized in tlieir beds, and shackeled as hos- 
tages, or slew from mere lust of Vjlood. In 
short, we are assured that these deeds of 
his had really no meaning in them. And 
if any one was to blame it was the South- 
ern people, who, this teachable history tolls 
ns, put themselves in a wrong light by get- 
ting excited and rushing to the conclusion 
that the raid was " significant of Northern 
sentiment." "It was soon known," says 
this history, "that in his wild design Brown 
had asked counsel of no one," and with 
this cool prevarication the whole subject is 
dismissed. There is no allusion to the toll- 
ing of funeral bells on the day of his 
execution. There is no mention of special 
services at churches draped in mourning, 
or of flags hanging at half-mast. And yet 
these things were so. And to-day he stands 
in apotheosis, the divinity of a new sect, 



96 On "Teachable" History. 

with an aureole about his brow, and a 
legend which declares that his mode of 
death "has made the gallows as sacred as 
the cross." And his name and fame have 
united to inspire, if not our national anthem, 
at least the battle-song of the republic's 
conquering armies. 

The instincts of the South were right! 
In the incursion of this tough old marau- 
der, half highwayman, and half fanatic, we 
had premonition of other hordes, more 
numerous, yet not more scrupulous, who, 
like him, were to ravage the land with a 
zeal quickened by rapacity, with a rapacity 
sanctified by zeal. 

I should like to call your attention to 
the cold and formal terms which are used 
in relating Federal disasters, and to contrast 
them with the effusion and glow and tumult 
which depict their victories. The Army of 
the Potomac, this teachable history informs 
us, was "checked" at Fredericksburg; and 



On "Teachable" History. 97 

again " checked " at Chancellorsville. Which 
is very true! It is likewise true that the 
army of Bonaparte was "checked" at 
Waterloo. But no French patriot, not even 
Victor Hugo, ever thought of putting it in 
that way! 

Now, turn the page, and see a Federal 
victory. We are carried at once into a 
new atmosphere — an atmosphere of the 
vivid, the picturesque, the dramatic. Behold 
Sheridan — the illustrious, and the illustrated 
— he of the "coal-black steed," spurning 
the dull earth beneath him, "covered with 
foam," his nostrils blown wide open, his 
tail in convulsions, "dashing to the new 
front," and sending the "plundering Con- 
federates whirhng up the Valley of the 
Shenandoah." 

On the next page in a foot-note, there is 
a brief reference to one of our cavalry com- 
manders. General Forrest. It is the only 
mention that this teacliable history makes of 



98 On "Teachable" History. 

that remarkable man, and every word is to 
his disparagement. And yet in all quarters 
of the globe, wherever the art of war is 
studied, the career of Forrest has been a 
marvel and a delight. A wandering star in 
the military firmament, his magnitude has 
not yet been measured nor his orbit traced, 
but his dazzling coruscations have bewildered 
the strategists of all climes and tribes, from 
Delhi to Kamschatka, from Sierra Leone to 
the Horse Guards. What would have been 
disaster and black ruin to other command- 
ers was to him but a mild exhilaration. 
Hemmed in bj^^ tenfold numbers, we catch 
again the inspiration of his cheery words : 

"Now, men; we've got 'em just right! 
They're all around us, and whichever way 
we go we shall mix up with 'em!" 

Truly, it might be said of him: 

" Most master of himself and least encumbered 
When most beset, surrounded and outnumbered." 



On "Teachable" History. 99 

At First Manassas (Bull Run) we have 
the astounding information that "the Con- 
federates were driven from the field," but 
were subsequently rallied. Then a shell 
burst among the teamsters' wagons, a caisson 
was upset, and McDowell's men fled, etc. 
This trick of statement runs all through 
the book. It is never the "Northern army" 
that is defeated ; but " McDowell's men," or 
Porter's corps, or the troops under Buell. 
McDowell, it is true, was one of the nine 
generals who, in succession, commanded the 
Army of the Potomac, but we have no right 
to assume that all school children are 
familiar with that fact. 

The author is definite enough when he 
describes the battle of Nashville. He does 
not say that the army of General Hood 
was " checked." But he says that General 
Thomas "drove the Confederate forces out 
of their intrenchments into headlong flight ; " 
that "the Union cavalry thundered upon 



100 On "Teachable" History. 

their heels with remorseless energy," and 
that "the entire Confederate army was dis- 
solved into a rabble of demoralized fugi- 
tives," only "the rear-guard" offering any 
effective resistance. But he does not tell 
you that that dauntless rear-guard, which 
baffled and demoralized and outfought ten 
times its own numbers, was commanded by 
the peerless Forrest. 

On the fatal third day of Gettysburg this 
author is equally definite. He does not 
simply say that Lee's army was "checked," 
but he goes into details. He depicts it in 
all the glory of its strength, so that he may 
show how magnificently his friends des- 
troyed it. "Out of the woods swept the 
Confederate double battle-line over a mile 
long." * * * "A thrill of admiration 
ran along the Union ranks, as, silently and 
with disciplined steadiness that magnificent 
column of eighteen thousand men moved 
up the slope." And then we are told how, 



On "Teachable" History. 101 

when it met its masters, " whole companies 
rushed as prisoners into the Union Unes, 
while the rest fled, panic-stricken, from the 
field." Which is not true. 

From the summit of Round Top, a pris- 
oner, I saw that charge. I saw groups of 
Pickett's heroes waving their battle flags 
and cheering on the crest of the works 
which they had won. But their ranks had 
been thinned almost to a skirmish line 
while they were sweeping through the open 
valley, and as they closed on their colors 
to assail the breastworks, their front pre- 
sented only a series of scanty fragments. 
A number of these fragmentary bodies, with 
a heroism never surpassed, carried the works 
at their front; but soon they were caught 
in flank and enveloped by the Federal re- 
serves. These movements were skillfully 
executed, apparently by company officers, 
and the Federal success, I think, was mainly 
due to the coolness and courage of those 



102 On "Teachable" Histoky. 

men on the second line. But at best the 
victory went by a narrow chance. It did 
not seem to me that it was exclusively "a 
thrill of admiration" that was running 
through the Union ranks. Couriers and 
staff officers were moving too, and wagon 
trains were thundering to the east, and a 
rear-guard was swiftly forming, and all the 
premonitary symptoms of a sudden retreat 
were in the air. A colonel of cavalry 
dashed up to the prisoners and threatened 
to ride down and sabre and utterly exter- 
minate any rebel who should attempt to 
escape. The rebels responded with a jubi- 
lant " hurrah for the Southern Confederacy," 
and the indignant colonel reviled them and 
rode away. There were barely a dozen of 
them — Captain Tom Christian of General 
Law's staff, and Frank Price of Hood's, and 
a few scouts from the Texas brigade. But 
they felt that it was their battle. The 
cannonade had been effective, and when 



On "Teachable" History. 103 

Pickett's steady line moved fonvard there 
was no one in the vicinity of Round Top 
who seemed to doubt that it would sweep 
everything before it. 

The day, alas! went against us. But it is 
not true that "whole companies rushed as 
prisoners into the Union lines." It is not 
true that the remnants of that devoted band 
"fled panic-stricken from the field." The 
author has been misinformed. These are 
fabrications. They are smooth, smiling, de- 
liberate Puritan fabrications, and he who 
coined them will have his portion in the 
burning lake, his share in the everlasting 
bonfire. They are needless fabrications. The 
battle was a brilliant one; the charge su- 
perb; gallantly made and bravely met; and 
to disparage either side is only to belittle 
the other. They are also shallow and 
stupid fabrications. Where was the general- 
ship of Meade that he did not spring forward 
his victorious lines to annihilate this " panic- 



104 On "Teachable" History. 

stricken" crew? Why did he allow Lee, 
for ten days, to remain on Northern soil, 
subsisting his troops, conducting his pris- 
oners, and marching along with his ten 
miles of wagon-trains? 



Of Stonewall's brilliant campaign against 
the four Federal armies of Milroy and 
Banks and Shields and Fremont there are 
but a few meagre lines, which conclude 
with the statement that "Jackson finally 
made good his escape, having burned the 
bridges behind him." 

And yet our distinguished chairman, who 
served on Jackson's staff, and who has trav- 
elled widely in Europe, will tell you that 
some of the foremost soldiers and military 
students of England have declared to him 
that this campaign was "the finest example 
of strategy and tactics of which the world 



On "Teachable" History. 105 

has any record; that in this series of 
marches and battles there was never a 
blunder committed by Jackson; that this 
campaign was superior to either of those 
made by Napoleon in Italy ; that it is taught 
in European colleges as a model of military 
skill, and that Von Moltke, the great strate- 
gist, declares it to be without a rival in the 
world's history." 



Lee's splendid defence against Grant is 
belittled in the same unworthy spirit. The 
great Virginian foresaw and thwarted every 
device of his antagonist. During the first 
few weeks of that fearful campaign he in- 
flicted on Grant a loss greater than the 
numbers of his own army. With a skill 
and vigilance and devotion unparalleled in 
human annals he held his constantly- 
lengthening line until it broke from sheer 
attenuation before the ever-swelling myriads 



106 On "Teachable" History. 

who assailed it. And yet this superb de- 
fence, which would outweigh a score of 
victories won on equal terms, is derided as 
a mere blind struggle, in which "the dense 
forests forbade all strategy." 

And now steadily, relentlessly, the bitter 
conflict draws to its close, and this teachable 
history can scarcely hide its glee. " Food 
failed them," * * "If they sought a 
moment's repose they were awakened by 
the clatter of pursuing cavalry. Lee, like a 
hunted fox, turned hither and thither," but 
Sheridan closed in upon him. 

Is it thus that future ages will contem- 
plate the closing act of that mighty drama? 
Will no apter figure be found than that of 
a vile earth-fox to symbolize this Heaven- 
born leader of men ? The comparison comes 
natural enough to this author, and it har- 
monizes with the animus of all his work. 
The "Secessionist," the "plunderer," the 
"invader," the "insurrectionist," is driven 



On "Teachable" History. 107 

to earth at last, and the writer cannot sup- 
press an inward chuckle. 

Shame on those who write such books,* 
and triple shame on those who foist them 
upon their innocent children! It may be 
that the power is not in us to withstand 
the trend of the times. And yet we do 
know that in the coming years, when, in 
her own high atmosphere, the Muse of His- 
tory shall depict the central figure of our 
fallen cause, — it will not be in the similitude 
of a prowling fox — predatory in life and 
abject in death — but rather will there arise 
before us, serene in native majesty, tha 
august and pathetic image of a noble spirit^ 
tried by every extremity of fortune, yet 
faithful to the end. The image of 

"A great man struggling 'mid the storms of fate^ 
And greatly falling with a falling State." 



ON THE OUTWORN THEORY OF 
GOVERNMENT BY CONSENT. 



AN ADDRESS. 



On the 11th of March, 1898, the Department of the 
Solid South presented to the Confederate Museum a 
portrait of President Jefferson Davis, on which occasion 
Colonel Cussons made the following presentation address : 



ON THE OUTWORN THEORY OF 
GOVERNMENT BY CONSENT. 



■T" •!■ •!• "^ ?p 

Promptly at the appointed hour Colonel 
John Cussons entered the room, and Hon. 
D. C. Richardson introduced the distin- 
guished soldier, who, he said, " on behalf of 
the Solid-South Room, will present to the 
Confederate Museum a portrait of Jefferson 
Davis, President of the Confederate States 
of America." 

COLONEL cussons' ADDRESS. 

Colonel Cussons, as soon as the applause 
subsided, said : 



114 On the Outworn Theory of 

Frie7ids, Comrades, Ladies and Goitlemen : 

On the 11th day of Marcli, 1861— thirty- 
seven years ago to-day — a nation was born. 
Calmly, unobtrusively, majestically, it came 
into being by virtue of the unconstrained 
political association of seven sovereign 
States which had withdrawn their adhesion 
from the Federal Union. At that time no 
publicist of note denied or doubted the 
absolute right of those sovereign powers to 
thus exercise their vital function of sover- 
eignty. 

On that fateful day I sat on the portico 
of the State Capitol at Montgomery, and 
noted the sedate yet earnest faces of that 
magnificent assemblage of gentlemen who 
had been delegated by their several States 
to adopt a Confederate constitution. 

There was no bravado there; no spirit of 
wanton defiance, either in word or act. 
Their deliberations were marked by a grave 



Government by Consent. 115 

and temperate earnestness, by a realizing 
sense of the momentous occasion wliich had 
called them togetlier. They met the demand 
of the hour with the patient diligence, the 
steadfast and serene fortitude of their race. 

And I said: 

If the Lincohi goverment shall attempt to 
despoil tliese people of their inherited right 
to govern themselves by lawful methods, in 
their own way, then must there come a con- 
flict which will not cease while the power 
of resistance remains — a conflict which will 
either vindicate for ages yet to come the 
great American principle of a people's God- 
given right to self-government; or else that 
principle, wounded in the house of its 
friends, will become a by-word and a 
mockery throughout all lands, and to the 
remotest times. 

Four years later, the drift of events had 
borne me again to the banks of that same 



116 On the Outworn Theoey of 

river, and I made my lonely camp with a 
little remnant of Forrest's gallant men. 
But there remained in all that region no 
trace of any familiar thing. The nation 
had perished. Four years of mortal strife, 
of immortal glory, of unfading renown. 
Four years of fortune's fickle moods, her 
smiles and frowns — of hopes and memories, 
and blinding tears, and sorrows which would 
not be assuaged. The nation had perished. 
Her armies, worn and wasted by victories, 
were reduced to fragments which could no 
longer form a battle line. Her opulent cities 
were a waste. The flower of her youth, 
the glory of her manhood, had passed away ; 
on wind-swept plains and in pathless for- 
ests, a little mound of nameless dust their 
only sepulchre. Every household in mourn- 
ing — every home in all the land forlorn and 
desolate. 

Yet are those heroes not forgotten, nor 
shall they be while patriotism is honored 



GOVEENMENT BY CONSENT. 117 

among men, or unavailing sacrifice can claim 
the tribute of a tear. 

"They fell devoted, yet undying; 
Their names the very winds are sighing ; 
The lonely column, cold and gray, 
Claims kindred with their sacred clay. 
Their spirits haunt the dusky mountains ; 
Their memory sparkles in ihe fountains; 
The tiniest rill, the mightiest river, 
Rolls mingled with their fame forever." 

The history of those eventful days is the 
history of the illustrious personage whose 
portrait the Department of the Solid South 
now presents to the Confederate Museum. 

As the chief of a fallen cause, Jefferson 
Davis must bear for a season that burden 
which the Fates ordain for those who sink 
beneath their frown. 

It is easy for the time-server to say that 
our leader should have surrendered when 
he saw that the trend of events was against 
us. But we must remember that to his 
steadfast and heroic soul there was no 



118 On the Outworn Theory of 

middle ground between right and wrong. 
He stood for the liberties of his country- 
men — for those rights which men of our 
race must have or perish in the attempt to 
attain them! 

And even if the Invader had asked the 
terms on which our chief would cease re- 
sistance, the spirit of his reply could have 
been only that which old Cato sent to all- 
conquering Csesar: 

" Bid him disband his legions, 
Restore the Commonwealth to liberty ; 
Submit his actions to the public censure, 
And stand the judgment of a free-born people." 

Jefferson Davis knew, as none else knew, 
the real nature and magnitude of the crisis 
which the South had to confront. 

He was dealing with a revolutionary 
faction which was not amenable to the 
ordinary dictates of reason and of right — a 
faction which had denounced the Union, 
and reviled the Constitution, and aspersed 



Government by Consent. 119 

the courts, and villified the nation's flag — a 
faction which mistook its passions for its 
conscience, and its freakish fancies for abid- 
ing principles — a faction which answered 
the patriotic appeal for Constitution and 
Union with the revolutionary counter-cry 
of " The Union as it is, and the Constitution 
as it ought to be" — a faction which no 
compact could bind, which no obligation 
could restrain — a faction which stigmatized 
the Southern States as an incubus and a 
reproach, and declared that " they could not 
be kicked out of the Union" — a faction 
which dedicated itself to the cause of " equal 
rights," and poured out all the fervor of 
its soul in the inspiring phrase, " We hav'nt 
got any niggers, and we don't mean that 
you shall have any"* — a faction which 

* Their lineal descendants, except such as have en- 
riched themselves by plunder, are still uttering the 
same cry, merely substituting the word "dollars" for 
" negroes." 



120 On the Outworn Theory of 

resisted the plea for peace by savagely 
declaring that "the Union would be im- 
proved by a little blood-letting" — a faction 
which started its choicest chapter with 
professions of the loftiest benevolence, and 
closed it with that nightmare of horrors, the 
witches' dance of reconstruction — a faction 
which inaugurated its reign of peace by 
instituting terrors more terrible than the 
terrors of war; which overthrew courts and 
constitutions, and set up military satrapies 
on the ruins of Sovereign States — a faction 
which disfranchised every Southerner of 
established character, and made the owner- 
ship of property a crime; which called to 
the front of civil power a servile race ; a 
race which had had nothing but its brief 
tutelage of slavery to uplift it from the bar- 
barism in which it had groped since the 
creation of the world — a faction which 
united every phase of folly in its theories 
with every form of atrocity in its practice; 



GOVEENMENT BY CONSENT. 121 

which instilled into the Negro heart the 
vile doctrine of "miscegenation," and thus 
planted the seeds of an evil which now 
overshadows the land — a faction which daffed 
aside all laws, human or divine, and called 
for a new Bible and a new God — a faction 
which had launched against the South the 
most ferocious and the most fearless of its 
fanatical freebooters, a man of iron nerve 
and bloody hand, who became at last their 
chosen divinity, and whose name and fame 
united to inspire the battle-song of their 
marauding armies. No graver crisis ever 
confronted a liberty-loving and law-abiding 
people. 

Jefferson Davis's European critics hold 
that he should have availed himself of the 
tremendous power which autocracy gives to 
war; that when the Lincoln Government 
resorted to despotic measures he also should 
have met force with force. But those 
critics forget that the South's struggle was 
solely for constitutional freedom, for civil 



122 On the Outwobn Theoky of 

privileges and social order, for liberty linked 
with law. 

The whole story of the war and its 
causes has been distorted and perverted 
and falsely told. Yet at the bar of unbiased 
history, before the tribunal of impartial pos- 
terity, it will become manifest that the vital 
principle of self-government — the world's 
ideal, and what was fondly deemed Amer- 
ica's realization of that ideal — went down 
in blood and tears on the stricken field of 
Appomattox. It was there that Statehood 
perished. It was there that the last stand 
was made for the once-sacred principle of 
"government by free consent." 

The present order of things will go on. 
The nation will gather strength and pres- 
tige and immunity, and power to repress 
and command, but never again will it be 
the government which the fathers ordained. 
Popular in its forms doubtless it will long 
remain, yet in essence it will be imperial — 
a vast and opulent yet virtually irresponsi- 



Government by Consent. 123 

ble oligarchy, uniting Grecian culture and 
British strength with something perhaps of 
Roman pomp and more than Persian mag- 
nificence. 

The old simplicity and the old integrity 
of the republic have passed away. The 
ancient temple of our liberties rested on 
many pillars, and thence derived its safest 
strength. But those stately pillars — their 
sovereign virtue gone — have become but as 
the slime into which they sank; and thence 
has emerged the nondescript which we now 
behold — this thing of shreds and patches — 
this mock of sovereign states — ^this federa- 
tion of political nonentities which no two 
statists in the land can agree upon, or 
define alike. 

Potential classes are now longing for a 
change ; they are earnest in their desire for 
what they call "a strong government." 
And it may be that their yearnings will not 
be in vain. The corruption of a republic 
is the germination of an empire. A period 



124 On the Outwokn Theory of 

of domestic turbulence or foreign war would 
render usurpation as easy as the repetition 
of a thrice-told tale. Political speculations 
would then reassume their old names — in- 
civism, sedition, constructive treason — and 
the familiar remedies would be applied — 
press censorship, the star chamber, lettres- 
de-cachet, and bureaus of military justice. 

What the gain would be, or what the loss, 
I do not ask. I merely point to that grand 
figure, who, through battle-storm and civic 
tempest, stood staunchly at the helm, and, 
with the well-worn chart before him, held 
the prow toward her ancient moorings, as 
constantl}'', as unfalteringly, as over midnight 
billows the needle tracks the polar star. 

The ship of state is staunch enough. 
Her timbers are sound, and her crew is 
sturdy and brave. But the old chart was 
shrivelled up by the fierce fires of war, and 
the old landmarks have been swept away. 
The wide sea is before us now, and we are 
drifting; but let us, at least, drift in good 



Government by Consent. 125 

hope. The sky is sprinkled thick with 
gleaming gems, and in the hazard of choos- 
ing our beacon let us earnestly pray that 
we may not follow "all stars of Heaven 
except the guiding one." 

The fame of our dead chief is with the 
ages and the nations. At a tempestuous 
period in our history he encountered the 
fell forces of bhnd intolerance and fanatic 
hate, and was crushed beneath their tread. 
Yet his name and memory will live, and 
be honored of men, when every memorial 
of those who overwhelmed him shall have 
crumbled into indistinguishable dust. 

" For graves like his are pilgrim shrines, 
Shrines to no creed or code confined — 
The Delphic Vales, the Palestines, 
The Meccas of the mind." 

Permit me, Governor O'Ferrall, in behalf 
of the Solid South, to present to the Con- 
federate Museum the portrait of our beloved 
and honored chief, President Jefferson Davis. 



ON GRANTING FORGIVENESS BEFORE 
IT IS ASKED. 



REPLY TO A LETTER 

On the subject of inviting the Grand Amy of the 

Republic to become the Guests of the 

Confederate Capital. 



IS IT TO BE DESIRED? 



COLONEL CU8S0NS ON THE PROPOSED COMING 
OF THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC. 



" The following letter has been received by a gentle- 
man of this city (Richmond, Va.) from Colonel John 
Cussons, Grand Commander of the Grand Camp of 
Virginia Confederate Veterans : " 

Glen Allen, Va., A^igust 4, i8gj. 

William C. Preston, Esq., 

Richmond, Va. ; 

My Dear Sir, — I have read with deep 
interest your letter of yesterday, and need 
not say how sedulously we should avoid 
any act or utterance which might possibly 



132 On Geanting Forgiveness 

engender friction between the departing and 
the on-coming generations of our people. 

Old Confederates dwell naturally in the 
past, nursing the memory of the great days 
which are gone — da3^s rich in promise and 
in achieved renown — days dark with the 
gloom of defeat, filled with abiding sorrow, 
yet never until now threatened with the 
taint of shame. 

Meantime our young men lift their eager 
gaze to the future, and are impatient of all 
that may seem to check or hinder their 
career. I sympathize with them. I wish 
them God-speed. They are the best depend- 
ence of Virginia, and in every fibre of my 
being I thrill with their energy and gather 
inspiration from their hope. 

But is this meeting of the Grand Army 
of the Republic a thing to be desired by 
the people of your city? Would 3'-our Con- 
federate Camps be likely to forget their 
many repulses and cordially fraternize with 



Before it is Asked. 133 

these visitors? Would they entertain them 
with that free and effusive hospitahty which 
has so long marked their treatment of the 
stranger within their gates? And failing 
this, even in slight degree, would not the 
day of healing be pushed further back? 

As a separate proposition, perhaps noth- 
ing would be more instructive or more 
salutary than a close intermingling of our 
Southern youth with the men of the Grand 
Army. For the illusion which Northern 
literature has been fostering among our 
young people would be rather rudely dissi- 
pated when a mixed assemblage of these 
gentlemen should begin to regale you with 
their camp songs on " Marching Through 
Georgia," and the " Sour Apple Tree," and 
^'Sheridan's Ride in the Valley." And to 
be less than prepared for this, would im- 
pose a restraint upon your guests which 
would rob their reunion of one of its strik- 
ing characteristics. 

As the Capital of the Confederacy — as 



134 On Granting Forgiveness 

a city which withstood their beleaguering 
armies for four immortal years — Richmond 
would naturally be an object of interest to 
its captors, and I doubt not that these 
gentlemen would accept your invitation pro- 
vided you could guarantee to them the 
customary fifty thousand dollars which they 
require for their entertainment. 

But would it be well to thus utilize the 
memorials of a sorrowful and sacred past 
in the interests of a spectacle and a show ? 
Would not the day of jubilee be a day of 
mourning to some of your noblest and most 
devoted people? Does not the historic 
fame of your fair city impose a class of 
obligations which you can not altogether 
disregard? And in any case would it not 
seem a little premature, and possibly in 
doubtful taste, to put yourselves in the 
position of proffering a forgiveness which 
has not been asked, and which might not 
i^ven be desired? 

In this connection I would recall the 



Befobe it is Asked. 135 

sentiments expressed some three years ago 
by a well-informed and patriotic Northerner. 
He said, in effect: 

" If there is a more hopeless man than he who can 
neither forgive nor forget it is the ' chronic reconciler * 
who improves every opportunity to haul out his faded 
olive branch and wave it in the eyes of the people. 

" The growth of reconciliation between the North and 
the South is the slow growth of years, and the work 
of generations. When any man, North or South, in a 
public place takes occasion to talk in a mellow and 
mawkish way of the great love he now has for his old 
enemy, watch him. He is getting ready to ask for 
something. There is a fine poetic idea in the reunion 
of two contending and shattered elements of a great 
nation. There is something beautifully pathetic in the 
picture of the North and the South clasped in each 
other's arms and shedding a torrent of hot tears down 
each other's backs as it is done in a play. But do 
you believe that the aged mothers on either side have 
learned to love the foe with much violence yet? Do 
you believe that the crippled veteran, North or South, 
now passionately loves the adversary who robbed him 
of his glorious youth, made him a feeble ruin, and 



136 On Granting Forgiveness 

mowed down his comrades with swift death? Do you 
believe that either warrior is so fickle that he has en- 
tirely deserted the cause for which he fought? Even 
the victor cannot ask that. 

" Let the gentle finger of time undo, so far as may 
be, the devastation wrought by the war, and let suc- 
ceeding generations seek by natural methods to reunite 
the business and the traffic which were interrupted by 
the conflict. 

" Two warring parents on the verge of divorce have 
been saved the disgrace of separation and have agreed 
to maintain their household for the sake of their chil- 
dren. Their love has been questioned by the world, 
and their relations strained. Is it not bad taste for 
them to pose in public and make a cheap Romeo and 
Juliet tableau of themselves? 

" Let time and merciful silence obliterate the scars 
of war, and succeeding generations, fostered by the 
smiles of natural prosperity soften the bitterness of the 
past and mellow the memory of a mighty struggle in 
which each contending host called upon Almighty God 
to sustain the cause which it honestly believed to be 
just. 

" Let us be contented during this generation with 
the assurance that geographically the Union has been 



Before it is Asked. 137 

restored, and that each contending warrior has taken 
up the peaceful struggle for bettering and beautifying 
the home so bravely fought for." * 

And let us not forget that to demand 
more than this, is to put in peril all that 
has been attained. 

I fully join with you in the opinion that 
for Richmond or any other Southern city 
to assume the relation of host to an organi- 
zation which is partly composed of negroes 
would at this time be peculiarly unfitting, 
and I sincerely hope that some other 
method may be devised for the advance- 
ment of Richmond's welfare. 

With kindest regards, I am, 

My dear Mr. Preston, 

Sincerely yours, 

John Cussons. 



* Nye's Hist. U. S. 



ON THE "TREACHERY" OF THE 
AMERICAN INDIAN. 



ON THE "TREACHERY" OF THE 
AMERICAN INDIAN. 



[From the Richmond (Va.) Dispatch.'\ 

COL. CUSSONS DEFENDS THE INDIAN. 



his stbiking address before the 
woman's club. 



The members of the Woman's Club enjoyed a rare 
treat on Monday evening in the address delivered by 
Colonel John Cussons on the Indian. General Dabney 
H. Maury also made a bright and interesting little 
speech in presenting Colonel Cussons, who did not 
confine himself to the subject announced for the even- 
ing — "The Indian in Literature and Legend" — but 
spoke from his own experience in defence of the Red 
Man against the charges — cruelty, revengefulness, and 
treachery. The gallant ex-Confederate, who spent years 
on the frontier, spoke with great earnestness and vigor, 
and was heard with close attention and deep interest. 

The chairman for the evening was Mrs. J. Arthur 
Lefroy, who, in a graceful manner, announced the speak- 
ers of the evening. 



142 On the "Treachery" of 

GENERAL MAURY'S SPEECH. 

General Maury, after giving a witty 
illustration of his inability to make an 
extemporaneous speech, said: 

"Your kindness in asking me to tell you 
about the North American Indians embar- 
rasses me, for it is founded upon the belief 
that I know a great deal about those 
Indians, whereas, the fact is, that I know 
only what is bad in them, and it will be 
unfair to such unfortunate people to tell 
only what is bad in their nature. I share 
the sentiments of all men of the United 
States army whose official life has been 
passed in dealing with these, our natural 
enemies. For three hundred years we have 
known them only as malefactors of the 
most vengeful and cruel nature. We have 
taken from them their country, destroyed 
their homes, and hunted them down as 
beasts of prey. After generations of our 



The American Indian. 143 

people have been born and lived and died 
in this antagonism, it is no wonder that the 
brutal sentiment of one of the most ruth- 
less of American commanders has found 
expression in the aphorism: 'There is no 
good Indian but a dead Indian.' 

"As my observation of these unhappy- 
people furnishes no exception to this 
verdict, I have been most fortunate in 
securing for your instruction this evening 
a gentleman who has probably observed 
and studied the Indian character more 
thoroughly than any man now living. My 
function, ladies, is to introduce to you our 
neighbor. Colonel John Cussons, who was 
for many years their guest and comj-ade — 
fought under Joe Johnston, Lee, and 
Forrest, and, after all his long experiences 
finally decided to become a Virginian and 
live amongst us. Permit me to introduce 
to you Colonel John Cussons, of Glen 
Allen, Virginia. 



144 On the ''Treachery" of 

address of colonel cussons. 

Colonel Cussons was given a cordial 
f\ reception. He said: 

I was very glad, ladies, to hear General 
v';' Maury's rebuke of the Sheridjan aphorism 
that "there is no good Indian but a dead 
y Indian," yet that pleasure was changed to 

surprise when he qualified his censure by 
directing it, not at the sentiment itself, but 
rather at "the ruthless commander" who 
uttered it. 

The phrase is an effective one. It has 
been a comfort and a solace to us amid 
deeds which required palliation. And yet I 
am afraid that it is too flexible, too general 
in its application, to be accepted as a per- 
fectly safe guide. As a recognized principle 
in casuistry it might prove awkward under 
changed conditions. Like Jeff Thompson's 
mountain howitzers it might do "great 
execution on the wrong side." What, for 



The Amebic an Indian. 145 

instance, if the Indian were to reverse the 
terms, and declare that "There is no good 
Yankee but a dead Yankee?" How would 
the sentiment strike us then? Should we 
feel that the phrase had settled the ethics 
of the case? — that the Indian would then 
be free to make "good people" of us? Or 
should we not probably change our views 
in the light of such practice? Might we 
not even go so far as to protest against 
the very principle itself? — the principle of 
setting up a rather sorry epigram as a 
substitute for the moral law? 

And now I want to ask why it is that an 
illustrious and scholarly soldier, a brilliant 
essayist and able historian, a keen observer, 
and logical reasoner who has so abundantly 
demonstrated his fitness for discerning and 
depicting the life and character of one 
people, should so completely misinterpret 
the leading traits and characteristics of 
another people? For it may be justly said 

10 



146 On the "Treacheey" of 

that if every other memorial of our epic 
period should perish, there would yet 
remain to us, in the "Recollections of a 
Virginian," a series of vivid pictures from 
which might be deduced the very form and 
pressure of the times. How, then, is it that 
the author of that volume — a volume which 
the philosophical historian of the future will 
justly regard as priceless — how is it that he 
who has painted so strikingly, with such 
felicity, and such fidelity, the life and spirit 
of the white American, should misread so 
strangely all the leading idiosyncracies of 
the red American? 

An answer to this question would be a 
virtual solution of the most vexed feature 
of the Indian problem. And perhaps the 
easiest way to get a general grasp of the 
subject will be by running a few parallels 
on familiar lines. 

It is evident that the relation which the 
Indian has borne to the white man on this 



The American Indian. 147 

continent resembles, in many respects, the 
relation which long existed between the 
people of the North and the people of the 
South. And it may be that, in the image 
of our cause we'll see the portraiture of his. 

He was guilty, like ourselves, of possessing 
a goodly heritage, and was imbued with a 
strong desire to enjoy his own inheritance 
in his own way. Like ourselves, he was 
wedded to his own mode of life — the life 
of his fathers — and like us, he asked only 
to be let alone. Like ourselves, he was 
first wronged, until he resisted, and then 
crushed because he resisted. And, like 
ourselves, only in a greater degree, his story 
has ibeen told by his enemy, and by his 
enemy alone. Like ourselves, in the pro- 
cess of subjugation, he has been judged by 
the apostates of his race ; yet, with us, the 
apostates by this time have wellnigh run 
their course, while with him they still abide. 

If we recall the evil days of Reconstruc- 



148 On the "Tbeacheey" of 

tion, we shall have before us the conditions 
which confront the Indian still. 

Our conquerors were inspired with a 
restless zeal to bring into the Union fold 
all the lost spirits who had wandered into 
the desert places of Secessia. And when 
they had found such paragons of loyalty as 
Judge Underwood, or reclaimed such tristful 
penitents as Brother Hunnicut, they Hfted 
up their voices and sang triumphant songs. 
Yet, when they had drawn the redeemed to 
their bosoms — when they began to catch 
the real flavor of their converts — it is little 
wonder that they marvelled exceedingly, 
and spake unto each other in shuddering 
whispers, saying: "If these are indeed the 
ransomed ones, what must the unregenerate 
be?" 

And so, for a season, the renegade and 
the traitor and every creature which could 
crawl and writhe and betray acted after his 
kind, and received the wages of his apos- 



The American Indian. 149 

tacy. Yet in the fulness of time it was 
seen that back of these smooth and supra- 
loyal proselytes were a great and earnest 
people, crushed to the dust, yet rich in 
every quality of a noble manhood. And so 
the hour of the scalawag passed away, and 
a new dawning opened upon the stricken 
South. 

But with the Indian there was no change. 
The apostate continued to be his spokes- 
man to the end, and the white man never 
realized that what he called the "friendly 
Indian" was always a traitor to his own 
people ; an outcast, a sycophant, a h3rpocrite 
— in one word, a scalawag. These were the 
creatures. General, who appeared to army 
officers as the representatives of their race. 
It was these whom you employed as guides 
and scouts — the Hunnicuts of their tribes — 
false, uncleanly yahoos, with whom, perhaps, 
you would have to ratify solemn treaties; 
wretches who would sign away the domain 



150 On the *'Tbeachery" of 

of their people or commit any other infamj'' 
for a canteen of rum. Such were the 
" friendly " members of every independent 
or hostile tribe which ranged the plains in 
the old days which preceded their impris- 
onment on the reservations. 

But glance down the shadowy past, and 
summon the free-born Lacotah of forty 
years ago — the indigenous native American, 
whom we have so wantonly destroyed. 
Look at him ! Lithe, sinewy, strong, hand- 
some in form, and in movement graceful as 
the leopard. Constant in his friendships, 
faithful to his people, crowned with the 
majesty which can dwell only where free- 
dom is — a kingly bearing, tempered by that 
gracious courtesy which springs from a 
union of kindly feeling with conscious 
strength — these were the qualities which 
marked him while he remained untouched 
by our higher civilization. A savage he 
may have been — wild, unlettered, impatient 



The American Indian. 151 

of restraint — yet he had a devotion and a 
kindliness which were all his own ; and I am 
not ashamed to say that I have met but 
few men who have more deeply impressed 
me with a sense of full manhood than the 
typical Lacotah warrior. It may be social 
treason to avow it, yet I have seen Robert 
E. Lee, both in bivouac and battle, when 
he has brought vividly to my mind the 
image of Matto-Num-Pa, a war chief of the 
Lacotah s. 

These people were largely what their free 
life made them; a hfe of activitj^ often 
of hardship, never of routine toil. They 
drank in the fresh air of the desert, and 
all their physical surroundings were whole- 
some and pure. Their tribal fealty, their 
bond of brotherhood, was strengthened and 
close-knit by the presence of formidable 
enemies — Pawnees on the South, Utes on 
the west, and the white man steadily 
encroaching on their eastern border. 



152 On the "Teeachery" of 

There were all the conditions among them 
of a full, material life; in some of its 
aspects fuller, and in most of its phases not 
less full than our own. No need of elabo- 
rate commerce or of manufactures. Their 
simple industry commanded the fruits which 
those activities yield. The buffalo was to 
them all, and more than all, that the 
reindeer is to the Laplander. It furnished 
them with food and clothing, with thread 
and cordage, with the lariat, the pishmore, 
and the lodge in which they dwelt. The 
pony represented almost universal uses. It 
was indispensable for war; indispensable for 
the chase. It was their measure of value, 
their medium of exchange. It stood for 
dowry, treaty, entertainment, currency, and 
transportation. Of the arts and sciences 
their knowledge was about equal to their 
needs. In jurisprudence they had the ad- 
vantage of us, chiefly in this, that their 
laws were intelligible — even to those who 



The American Indian. 153 

studied them. They didn't worry themselves 
about tariffs, or fritter their lives away in 
trying to find out whether it was the pro- 
ducer or the consumer who paid the tax. 
They spent no strength on questions of 
bimetallism or monometallism. As I said, 
their currency was the pony, and they 
didn't care whether in was white or yellow, 
or even piebald, provided it would go. 

But it is said that they are cruel, heart- 
less, destitute of all emotion. Let us see. 
And let us not forget that the most ruthless 
cruelty is that which betrays through the 
affections. 

I recall an incident which will illustrate 
my meaning. 

Plainsmen of forty years ago will remember 
the old Frenchman, Provo, who had a ranch 
on the North Platte. He married an Oga- 
lalla woman, and , had the reputation of 
being the poorest shot in the country, 
although otherwise he was accounted a 



164 On the "Teeachery" of 

decent sort of a man. One day he picked 
up an antelope fawn and tethered it in a 
copse of willows about a mile from his 
lodge, and then went after his old Hawkins 
rifle, his idea being that the bleating of the 
fawn would attract the doe, and thus give 
him a pot shot. His squaw, suspecting 
what was going on, started for the river 
bottom on a dead run, and I cantered over 
to see what would happen. Wau-seech-ee 
Hung-Coo was a picture of rage and morti- 
fication. She seized his * rifle and flung it 
in the slough, and then liberating the little 
fawn, and flipping her fingers at Provo, she 
stalked back towards the ranch, an embody- 
ment of silent scorn. But soon she broke 
down, and signaling me to her side, she 
begged that I would forget the incident and 
never mention it to their children. 

That "heathen women," General Maury, 
had never learned from us either the 
teachings or the deeds of mercy. No white 



The American Indian. 155 

man's lips had ever interpreted to her the 
divine injunction, "Thou shalt not seethe 
the kid in the mother's milk." 

And now a word as to the revengeful 
character of these people. I think it is Mr. 
Blackstone who defines revenge as "a wild 
kind of justice." And with the Lacotahs, 
fair and equal reprisal certainly carried the 
sense of salutary and natural justice. It 
ranked with their highest virtues, and ac- 
companied them — honor, courage, truth, 
self-devotion, fortitude, unshaken constancy. 

We must remember that men may be 
beneath revenge, as well as above it. It is 
always easier to suffer a wrong than to 
redress it; it may or it may not be nobler. 
But it is at least certain that he who is 
swiftest in forgiving his enemies may 
be equally swift in forgetting his friends. 
Revenge relates to a personal wrong; justice 
to a public one. The injury which the 
Lacotah chiefly resented was not that which 



156 On the "Teeachery" of 

was done to himself, but to his tribe. It 
was not revenge, but simple justice. 

But how about their treachery, their 
subtlety, their craft, their ineradicable deceit? 
That is supposed to have been their crown- 
ing infamy. It was that which made it our 
duty to blot them from the face of the 
earth. Well, take a few familiar examples. 
The so-called "Custer massacre," for instance. 
It was simply an attempted surprise met by 
a counter-surprise. Custer himself delivered 
the battle. The fight was in open field, and 
the numbers nearly equal. The Lacotahs 
simply outgeneralled, outmanoeuvred, and 
outfought their adversaries. The only spe- 
cific charge ever brought against them was 
that the "treacherous dogs" had armed 
themselves with rifles, "just like our own," 
when everybody knows that bows and arrows 
are the proper weapons for Indians. 

The success of Sitting Bull's strategy 
turned on the chance that Custer's troops, 



The Amebic an Indian. 157 

on finding what appeared to be an unde- 
fended village, would make a reckless dash 
at it, and go to sabring the women and 
children ; in which case an ambuscade 
ought not only to repulse their headlong 
charge, but should also impair their disci- 
phne, and break their ranks to such an 
extent that they might be scattered and 
beaten before they could effect a rally. 

The old chief knew that Custer's Pawnee 
scouts had made a midnight reconnoissance 
of the village, and he had instructed his 
outposts not to molest them. He then pre- 
pared for the surprise party. Sending the 
women and children a few miles up the 
river, he supplied their places with a 
detachment of his warriors, ordering them 
to potter around the campfires and imper- 
sonate old women, cuddling little bundles 
of artificial babies, and keeping their rifles 
well hidden beneath their blankets. The 
moment the Long-Knives should come in 



158 On the "Treachery" of 

sight they were to pick up the bundles 
and scuttle off, with every appearance of 
terror, toward the rising ground, where a 
number of others were to lie in ambush 
and join them in receiving the shock. 

Note the situation. General, and let the 
charge of cruelty fall where it properly 
belongs. Sitting Bull risked everything — his 
lodges, his ponies, the stored wealth of his 
camp — on the single chance that his ene- 
mies would throw themselves into perilous 
disarray when afforded an opportunity to 
gratify what he deemed their innate 
savagery and sheer lust of blood. 

Custer had received from his Pawnee 
scouts a full description of the situation, and 
was confident of a great victory. And so, in 
swift secrecy, he moved toward the tranquil 
village in the green valley of the Big Horn. 
As the trail led down to the ford, he 
divided his forces, so that none of the 
Indians might escape. The attacking column, 



The American Indian. 159 

believing itself undiscovered, got very near, 
and then, with headlong rush, swept to its 
pre3^ The imitation " squaws " fled in 
simulated terror towards the hills. The 
troopers dashed in their spurs ! No longer 
riding boot to boot, but every horseman 
doing his best ! — every sabre swirling — every 
eye gleaming — from every throat an exultant 
shout ! 

But just as they reached their intended 
victims the scene changes. With a swift 
movement, the "squaws" fling c#^f^ei||p^ 
blankets, while all around them, froiji 'Gl%ry 
turf and bush and rock, springs an ariiied' 
warrior ! The tables are turned ! The ranks 
of death confront them ! A gleam of painted 
faces, grim as fate, horrible as hell! a yell 
in their ears hideous as the blast of doom! 
the tremulous air quivering with the twang 
of arrows and the swirl of tomahawks and 
the flash of spears ! The shock has appalled, 
dismayed, unnerved them ! Men and horses 



160 On the "Treachery" of 

crash down in a mass! The hving steeds, 
with a snort of terror, recoil, and scatter 
over the plain. Swift pursuit is made. 
The fugitives reel in the saddle and tumble, 
one by one, clutching the empty air. A 
little remnant swims the river and joins 
the main body. And there, on Custer's 
chosen ground, the battle is fought to an 
end. 

And then a cry of "Treachery" rings 
through all this land, and our moral sense 
demands a crusade of extermination! 

"Treachery!" It is simply the interplay 
of ambuscade — of stroke and counterstroke 
— a vital element in the strategy of war. 

But if this be indeed treachery, then the 
most treacherous man that ever planted foot 
on this round globe was Thomas Jonathan 
Jackson — our own thrice-glorious Stonewall. 
He was the very prince and potentate of 
deceivers — the quintessense of dissimulation. 

See how he deceived poor Mr. Pope 



The American Indian. 161 

during the three days and nights which led 
up to the Second Battle of Manassas. Why, 
he told that confiding general the most 
astounding lie that has ever been uttered 
in the universal sign-language of war — a lie 
sixty miles long! A tortuous, twisting, 
twining lie; a he which worked its swift 
and sinuous course far up the south bank 
of the Rappahannock — doubHng at Salem 
and White Plains — ghding across Hazel 
river; stealthily creeping behind the wall of 
Bull Run mountains; threading that range 
through Thoroughfare Gap, and then in the 
murk of midnight, swooping down on 
Bristow Station and Manassas Junction, and 
scattering commissaries and quartermasters 
and sutlers in a way that commissaries and 
quartermasters and sutlers had never been 
scattered before! 

There he is — receiving railroad trains 
freighted with fresh supplies from Philadel- 
phia and New York — but consigned to Mr. 
11 



162 On the "Treacheby" of 

Pope. All the riches of the world spread 
out before him — arms, munitions, blankets, 
shoes, bacon, flour, hardtack, coffee, canned 
goods — everthing that a soldier needs, world 
without end! 

And where is Mr. Pope? He's out 
yonder at the front with seventy thousand 
men, covering the line of the Rappahannock 
from Kelly's Ford to Waterloo bridge. He 
had made his appointment to meet Jackson 
there; and Jackson knew it. Pope had 
announced to all the world that he didn't 
believe in fooling away time with " basis of 
supply" or "lines of retreat." Yet see how 
Jackson deceived him; striking him in the 
rear; destroying him; so twisting him up 
that he couldn't identify his own headquar- 
ters ! Were Indians ever guilty of treachery 
more gross than that? 

And see how he treated Shields, and 
Banks, and Hunter, and Milroy, and Fre- 
mont. He was everywhere except where 
those generals had a right to expect him! 



The American Indian. 163 

Think of the trick he played on McClellan. 
When that able soldier had advanced his 
parallels to the very walls of this devoted 
city — just as the mailed hand of war was 
being stretched forth to clutch her — there 
was sudden tumult yonder, eight miles 
away, at Cold Harbor. Staff officers, in hot 
haste were dashing to McClellan's quarters, 
with news that the works were assailed; 
that the flank was turned; that the rebels 
were carrying all before them! Who 
stormed those ramparts? Who burst those 
barriers and hewed out the path to victory? 
It was that arch dissembler, Stonewall Jack- 
son. What right had he on McClellan's 
flank, when McClellan and Lincoln and 
Stanton, and all the world believed him to 
be beyond the Blue Ridge mountains yon- 
der, playing bo-peep with a trio of generals 
who were reporting two or three times a 
week that they had him surrounded at last, 
and would bag him on the morrow ? Ah ! 



164 On the "Tkeachery" of 

he was fearfully treacherous. There was no 
dependence to be placed in him — by the 
Federal commanders. 

What was his conduct toward Hooker at 
Chancellorsville? Deceiving that General by 
a pretended retreat, he stealthily crept 
around his flank, and hurled such battle on 
the head of Fighting Joe as has no parallel 
in the annals of war. The Eleventh Corps 
(twenty thousand strong) passed from his- 
tory on that fateful day. A fateful day, 
alas! for us, too, in the loss of that single 
life. But his fame is with the ages, now; 
his glory is the heritage of our race. 

Let us have one weight and one measure. 
Let us be ashamed to call the same thing 
by different and contradictory names. Let 
the science of war, and its highest attribute, 
strategy, have the same name and the same 
honor, whether exercised by the white man 
or the red man. We see how incongruous 
is the charge of " treachery," when we im- 



The Amebic an Indian. 165 

pute it to that stainless soldier whose fame 
has filled the world. Why, then, should we 
apply the dishonoring word to a Lacotah 
chief, for the very acts and deeds, inspired 
by the self-same motives, which filled the 
heart and nerved the arm of Stonewall 
Jackson? Both alike fought for hearth and 
home, for ancient right, for the freedom 
which they had inherited from their fathers, 
for the freedom which they were bound, by 
every patriotic or tribal bond, to transmit 
unimpaired to their children. 

If we had to kill those people, better that 
we had done it with open hand, Hke the 
robbers we are, than stain our souls by 
paltering with the truth — imputing to them 
the treachery which we ourselves have 
practiced. 

And what are we that we should presume 
to draw an impassable line between our 
victims and ourselves? 

Were not our own ancestors mere sava- 



166 On the "Tkeachery" of 

ges, but lately tamed? When civilization 
not less splendid than our own adorned all 
the coasts of the Mediterranean — when 
learning, and arts, and philosophies extended 
from the far Orient to the western sea — 
were not our fathers naked savages, living 
in caves and dens, devouring raw flesh, 
fighting for wives, and measuring strength 
with wild beasts? Are we not sprung from 
the loins of barbaric Britain, and marauding- 
Dane, and free-booting Saxon? Does not 
the fierce blood of the old Norse sea kings 
flow in our veins? — that pirate brood who 
sailed the northern coasts, scattering in pale 
dismay the peaceful peoples, and ravaging 
every port where industr}'- had made a foot- 
hold, or commerce had establislied a mart? 
Are we not proud to claim descent from 
the Norman robber, meaguer the bar-sinister 
across his 'scutcheon, thus conceding that 
we peld our homage to nothing but the 
mailed hand of force? 



The American Indian. 167 

Would you have a more recent example? 
Turn back, then, for the brief period of 
three human lives, and you see a kindred 
people who were as wild, as untamed, as 
resentful of what we call civilizing influ- 
ences as ever were the Lacotahs of the 
western plains. Mark the dying words of 
the typical Scottish Highlander, when he 
blessed his son and bade him remain true 
to the traditions of his fathers: "Plant no 
tree; build no house; dig not the soil. 
Keep thy refuge in the mountains. Spoil 
the invader who crosses thy border. Wear 
not the collar of the stranger. Be true to 
thy clansmen, and live the free life which 
thy fathers lived." 

There are some tribes, some peoples^ who 
can pass under the yoke; who can accept 
a master. There are others who can not — 
whose necks will not bend; whose souls 
can not yield. There must be time; time, 
and a change of circumstance. A little will 



168 On the "Teeachery" of 

suffice — a generation or two. It was enough 
for the Scot; it might have been enough 
for the Lacotah. The world can not afford 
to spill that adventurous, that unconquerable 
blood. The grandson of the old borderer 
has thrown aside the claymore, and to-day 
is leading the van of progress in all lands. 
To the Lacotah we gave no chance. We 
hunted him for our sport until we had 
lashed him into fury, and then turned loose 
upon him all the destructive " strength of 
civilization, without its mercy." 

A final word on the fate of Sitting Bull, 
the gentle, kindly lad, who made his home 
with us in the lodge. His prestige as a 
prophet was due to his fixed conviction 
that sooner or later the white man would 
prove faithless. With his Httle band of 
followers he had kept the open field until 
about seven years ago, when, worn with 
battle-toil and civil care, he entered, at our 
urgent solicitation, into a treaty of perma- 



The Amekican Indian. 169 

nent peace. He scrupulously observed the 
terms of his compact, and no accusation 
was ever brought against him, except that 
it was " beheved " that he intended to leave 
the reservation. It was the first time that 
he had ever trusted us, and as soon as we 
had him completely within our power, in 
cold blood, we murdered him. That dark 
deed was committed under the auspices of 
a detachment of troops from Fort Yates, 
who had made a plot with the "Indian 
police" on the reservation. At a signal 
from the troops the police were to raise a 
disturbance, and thus get a pretext for the 
butchery. The disturbance failed, but the 
murder went on. It was at the dawn of a 
Sabbath morning that the troops, after a 
long night march, approached his camp. A 
cry was raised that the Long-Knives were 
coming ; the idea being that he would either 
make a dash for his horse or stand on 
defence. He did neither. He bade his 

12 



170 On the "Tbeachery" or 

people be calm, telling them that they were 
in the hands of the Great White Chief, and 
that the Long-Knives were that chief's 
children. And so they had to stab him, as 
he stood in his tent, with his head bowed 
and his arms crossed upon his breast. 

The deeds of Claverhouse were disavowed; 
as were those of Alva, and Aleric, and 
Dalrymple. We are less squeamish. The 
Massacre of Glencoe is still a stain on the 
government which condemned, yet did not 
avenge it. We are more practical. Before 
the desert breezes had lapped up the blood 
of this murdered chief we were mocking 
the "heathen moans" of his bereft kindred, 
and rejoicing in the fact that our holy 
religion had at last acquired supreme right 
of way. 

And the Great White Chief (our late 
worthy President Mr. Benjamin Harrison) 
congratulated the country on this achieve- 
ment, and assured us that the Indian 



The American Indian. 171 

question was a simple matter now that 
Sitting Bull had been put out of the 
way. 

"Put out of the way" is a mild phrase. 
But, General Maury, you will pardon me 
for sapng that it were better that ten 
thousand men should fall in the ranks of 
open battle, than that one life should be 
surreptitiously taken by connivance of the 
national authority. 

My God! — Is it to tliis that our vaunted 
civilization has brought us at last? — that 
we, the children of light, the heirs of all 
the ages, should slay a confiding enemy 
whom our truce had beguiled, and then 
condone the crime by imputing to him a 
faithlessness which was all our own ! 

Have we, indeed, in dealing with these 
people, lost all sense of distinction between 
military strategy and personal treachery? 
Shall we take the sword of the soldier, 
which appeals in God's sunlight to earth 



172 On Indian "Teeacheey." 

and Heaven, and barter it for the stealthy 
dagger of the assassin? 

In judging us as a nation, may the 
Almighty cast aside His scales of justice, 
lest He should deal with us as we have 
dealt with our unhappy victims. 

These people, General Maury, were my 
friends. They were faithful and just to me, 
and in their behalf, on occasion, I will, at 
least, "unpack my heart with words." 



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